THE RAILWAY MAN

I read Eric Lomax 's autobiography fifteen years ago and revisited it as a film version is shortly being released in the UK.  However,  my revisit was  through an unabridged audio book version read by Bill Paterson who manages superbly to bring out Lomax's dourness,  dryness and decency. It is a terrific rendering of the written book.

I always found the first-third of the book a little dull but necessary to create the sense of the writer's ordinariness and his love of machinery,  particularly of old steam locomotives. A sense of loneliness and solitariness is also evident.  The railway serves as a running metaphor throughout; its symbolism evident from the offset.  The second-third,  is harrowing made more so by its non-sensationalist account of the torture, humiliations,  sufferings and privations of the POWs including of course, Lomax.   The arbitrariness of the torture and Lomax's will to survive at any cost is demonstrated during these chapters.   However,  I found the final-third to be the most compelling: the story of the long term effect of this experience on the writer and others like him.  Lomax is brutally frank about how he found adapting to normal life extremely difficult as he carries the mental and emotional scars over the decades.   The knock-on effect on those he is close to particularly his first and second wives is also handled with great candidness and must have been an experience suffered by many of the servicemen and servicewomen returning home in trying to carry on as if nothing had happened during the intervening years of the war. Implicit is the testing of  Lomax's faith not only in humanity but also in God. He is a religious man before the war but implicitly, it would appear, that his faith brings him little solace in the war's  aftermath in dealing with his issues. Coming to terms with his broken-self and his reconciliation with one of his main tormentors is what I found the most rewarding and uplifting.   

Firth, who plays the older Lomax can do repressed emotions extremely well although I have reservations regarding Kidman's role as Lomax 's second wife Patti.  Patti is a stalwart in Lomax's life and initiates the first steps in communication with his former enemy. I hope I am proven wrong about Kidman.  I am uncertain why the film has been made now, given the book was released in the 1990s.  It is to be welcomed though, as this aspect of the Second World War has lived far too long in the shadows of David  Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai.   The book also touches on the plight of the civilian slave workers who were also treated terribly by the Japanese yet had very little assistance in helping them to return to their countries at the war's end,  often ending up living a mendicant existence in the villages beside the railway they suffered in building.   

A further element of the story is how torturers can also feel remorse and guilt and in a sense endure a form of torture after the event.   The idea that people can change in a good way is also interesting and  an uplifting idea.   I would like the final two-thirds of the book to be given equal weight in the film. Whether all these elements can be addressed in a movie,  especially one aimed at a mass-audience, is debatable.   I will watch the film version but with a degree of trepidation.   

Steve