The Railway Man

British officer Eric Lomax, decades after enduring torture as a POW laborer on the Burma Railway, is haunted by his trauma. When he discovers his former Japanese interrogator is still alive, he confronts his past. The film intercuts his wartime suffering with his postwar journey toward reconciliation.

The Thailand–Burma Railway, built by the Japanese using Allied POWs and Asian forced laborers between 1942 and 1943, claimed thousands of lives from disease, starvation, and abuse. Eric Lomax's memoir of the same name recounts his real torture and eventual meeting with his interrogator Takashi Nagase.

Based closely on Lomax's autobiography, though some details of the reconciliation meeting were altered for dramatic effect.

Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky

Cast: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine, Stellan Skarsgård

Positioned at 1942–1943 within the World War II phase of the war, as part of the Burma Railway construction. This is entry 81 of 150 in the chronological archive.

• Burma Railway
• POW torture
• reconciliation
• memoir adaptation

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  The Bridge on the River Kwai

  1942–1943

• 

  Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

  1942–1944

• 

  A Town Like Alice

  1942–1945

• 

  Paradise Road

  1942–1945

• 

  Went the Day Well?

  1942 (hypothetical invasion scenario)

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  Anthropoid

  May 27 – June 18, 1942