FILM REVIEW: THE RAILWAY MAN

Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) in The Railway Man.

Getting there from here

By John Esther

In the early 1980s, Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) is a lonely, tormented man who continues to study Britain's railway system. He has always loved trains, despite the pain this love for trains brought him during WWII when he and his fellow British soldiers surrendered to Japanese soldiers in Singapore, 1942, and were brought to the Thai/Burma border and ordered to build the "Death Railway."

During another yet seemingly ordinary ride on the train, Lomax meets Canadian nurse Pattie Wallace (Nicole Kidman) and the two have such a remarkable conversation, Eric, at last, falls in love. The two get married.

However, it soon becomes very clear to Mrs. Lomax that her husband has psychological problems stemming from the great war. With the help of Finlay (Stellan Skarsgaard), a fellow POW of Eric's, Patti is determined to help her husband.

Based on Lomax's book, directed by Jonathan Teplitzky and the screenplay written by Andy Paterson and Frank Cottrell Boyce, the film deals with some of the uglier aspects of war, namely how torture can be justified by the upper echelons of government through twisted language that winds it way down the chain of command. Indeed, the use of language plays many roles in The Railway Man.

While in The Railway Man, the film deals with a British officer (Jeremy Irvine) and a Japanese-English translator Takeshi Nagase (Tanroh Ishida) who tortures the young Eric through such techniques as waterboarding, as an American, one can only anticipate the day when filmmakers illustrate (further) the torturous events at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and those who are and were on the wrong side of history.

In the meantime, The Railway Man is not only a germane warning to current U.S. policy, it is also one of the better films to come out so far this year.

"So many dead." "No, so many murdered."

 

FILM REVIEW: BLACK DEATH

Langiva (Carice von Houten) in Black Death.

A sign of tortuous times

By Ed Rampell

Like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, Black Death is set in Europe during the Dark Ages, with man confronting death and his own mortality. Although it’s not in the same league as the 1957 classic starring Max von Sydow as a benighted knight, I found director Christopher Smith’s movie to be an engrossing account of Europe ravaged by the Black Death. It is also a frightening tale as well as quite thought provoking.

Set in 1348 England (but shot in Germany), the Grim Reaper comes in Black Death not in the form of a cloaked spectral chess player but as bubonic plague sweeping the continent, wiping villages and monasteries out. An elite unit of knights, who are skilled swordsmen and torturers -- think Dark Ages Dirty Dozen or Middle Ages Magnificent Seven -- led by the formidable Ulric (Sean Bean of the upcoming The Magnificent Eleven) are dispatched to a distant plague-free village. Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), a young, fallen monk familiar with the terrain, is recruited to lead the not-so-merry band on their somber mission.

David Warner, who portrayed the madcap Marxist in 1966’s delightful film, Morgan! (which Jacob Tierney’s wonderfully droll 2009 comedy, The Trotsky, is reminiscent of), plays an Abbot -- minus Costello, as this is definitely not a comedy. Indeed, like those European Medieval Mystery plays, Black Death is a morality tale suffused with religious themes. When Ulric encounters the village spared the plague, he has something quite different in mind than learning from them how the rest of Europe can scientifically be saved from destruction.

Led by the sensuous healer Langiva (Carice van Houten), the villagers know the not-so-gallant knights have something up their armored sleeves. Black Death becomes a very philosophical film about sexuality: free love versus original sin. It also questions the nature of religion and the existence of God, just as Bergman’s masterpiece did 54 years ago. The ensuing debate between Christian fundamentalists and pagans is cleverly contemporary, and Dario Poloni’s screenplay is suggestive of the current struggle between religious zealots and atheists.

Some wags have pointed out that today’s nonbelievers, typified by Christopher Hitchens, are as dogmatic and doctrinaire in their discarding and denying of deities as the faithful flock. Touche! (Although I noticed on a recent 60 Minutes report that Hitchens, who is now battling cancer – not bubonic plague -- appears to be giving himself some theological wiggle room. You know – just in case. Call it the “No atheists in the foxhole syndrome.”) In any case, regarding Black Death’s faction fight, your humble scribe says: “A plague upon both of your houses!”

I generally avoid horror movies like the, ahem, plague, but I found this spooky flick and its trip two thirds of a millennium back in time to long ago and far away to be an absorbing and enthralling voyage. Amen.