Ghosts on the line

THE RAILWAY MAN
Cert 15
116 minutes
Director Jonathan Teplitzky

This film tells the story of Eric Lomax, who was captured with the ‘forgotten army’ of others at the fall of Singapore in February 1942.

He became one of the slaves used to build the infamous Burma Railway and with others was horribly tortured by the Kempei Tai (the Japanese equivalent of the Gestapo) for building a radio receiver while in the prison camp.

I wanted to see this film. First, that was because, though not suffering to the same extent, my father was a survivor of the POW Camp at Changi Jail where Lomax ended up. Second, having read Lomax’s 1996 book it is clear that, before the war, he was influenced by Christianity as part of the youth group at Charlotte Chapel, Edinburgh.The book makes clear that although he afterwards forsook the faith, he was helped by reading his Bible daily during his captivity. This is only hinted at in the film.

The film itself focuses on Lomax meeting his second wife Patti (Nicole Kidman) and the tremendous difficulties the mental scars of his POW experience brought to the marriage. As it cuts between the 1980s and the 1940s, the older Lomax is played by Colin Firth and the younger by Jeremy Irvine. With some dramatic licence, it explores how he eventually came to terms with his past. This included meeting one of his torturers.

Forgiveness

The driving force behind Lomax’s frequent silences, so difficult for his wife, and the terrifying flashbacks which haunted his mature years, was the enormous injustice of what he suffered and the desire for revenge. This shows we humans are, especially as victims, beings with moral expectations written into us. Lomax eventually finds the resources to forgive his tormentor, but only as he discovers that he too has been mentally tortured for years by memories of his crimes. What I took away was that it is only through justice done and repentance that there can be real forgiveness. Of course, before God, that leads us to the cross as penal substitution and true sorrow for our sin.