Traditionally, Boxing Day heralds the release of the big Christmas movies.
Traditionally, a big Christmas movie is a saccharine Disney animation or a bloated CGI fantasy or a mindless, jejune gross out comedy.
THE RAILWAY MAN is none of these and yet it most encompasses the true meaning of Christmas – peace on earth and good will to all men.
It’s a multi track journey, with myriad sidings and shunting, the risk of derailment ever present, with a destination delivered of a very, long dark tunnel.
Based on Eric Lomax’s memoir, THE RAILWAY MAN, the film further cements Jonathan Teplitzkty reputation as one of Australia’s foremost contemporary movie makers.
Working from a terrific script by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Patterson, Teplitzkty navigates the narrative via impressive visuals and superlative performances.
We first meet Eric, the railway man of the title, studying train timetables and gauges. This has been a lifelong obsession and a pivotal irony from his past, when as a young soldier he saw his comrades worked to death, and he himself tortured, on the construction of the Burma railway.
Another rail related twist of fate sees the confirmed bachelor meeting a woman on the train with whom he strikes up a conversation which blossoms into a romance culminating in marriage. Sharing a bed also means sharing nightmares. Memories too hard to annunciate become vivid night terrors, surfacing from the subconscious when the sentry that halts these horrors during the day, sleeps.
Determined to eradicate these insidious and hideous hidden traumas, his newlywed wife prompts him to return to the place of his torment and face the perpetrator of atrocities inflicted.
Colin Firth brings his usual grace, intelligence and understated strength to the role of the contemporary Eric, while Jeremy Irvine matches him in every aspect as the young POW Eric. It is a triumph of both performance and casting.
As Eric’s patient yet persistent wife, Patti, Nicole Kidman turns in one of her best performances in recent memory.
Garry Phillips cinematography is stunning, with an awesome sequence in Hellfire Pass that is worth the price of admission. In an extraordinary piece of framing and lighting the shots take on an amazing 3D perception.
Above all though, THE RAILWAY MAN is about reconciliation and the extraordinary power it has. It shares this theme with the other great Boxing Day cinema release, PHILOMENA.
Whether it’s the torture of a son stolen from a mother or a soldier robbed of his humanity, whether the work camp is run by nuns or Japanese militarists, revenge and retribution are clearly elements of a vicious circle. Reconciliation takes the vicious and replaces it with vivacious, closing the circle in a much more positive and life affirming way.
As we mourn the passing of Nelson Mandella while simultaneously celebrating his marvelous achievement and legacy of nation building, films such as THE RAILWAY MAN and PHILOMENA are not only poignant but manifestly relevant to our aspirations of peace on earth and good will to all men.