‘The Railway Man’: Incredible true story, even if director isn’t the best conductor
“The Railway Man” is one long therapy session revolving around one veteran’s struggle with PTSD that has plagued him for years following his incarceration in a World War II Japanese prison camp. It casts shades of “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” and “The Deer Hunter.” It’s also a true story based on Eric Lomax’s memoir of coming to terms with the demons of war that tormented him for much of his adult life.
The film begins tranquilly enough in a sleepy little English shore town in the 1980s, where at a men’s club meeting over beers, the somewhat reluctant Eric (Colin Firth) wistfully recounts his affection for Patti (Nicole Kidman), a women he met recently on a train. Trains and railways happen to be an obsessive hobby for Eric (thus the title). He’s also a kind and engaging soul, and soon enough he and Patti are moving toward marriage in all the most maudlin and pat ways possible. It’s here the film begins to feel dangerously like a large, sugary gobstopper, all fluff and no fire, but then the closet door opens and the skeletons start to pour out. Eric erupts in night terrors, he’s fiscally a disaster and sometimes he mutters to people who aren’t there.
It turns out that men’s club is what’s left of a battery of British soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese during the fall of Singapore. Continue reading
The film starts off on the morning of the big, titular day with Sonny going back and forth with his girlfriend Ali (Jennifer Garner) about who he might pick. And of course she has some big news to tell him, but his phone keeps ringing. Cleveland has the No. 1 pick in the draft and everyone wants it because there’s a QB out there who’s the next Tom Brady – interesting timing because the team that’s after him the most, the Seattle Seahawks, have Russell Wilson and just won the Super Bowl. It’s kind of the same post-shoot conundrum that afflicted “Fever Pitch” when the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years and the filmmakers had to scurry to stay with the times).
Director David Gordon Green’s been a bit all over the map himself, from the small indie gem “George Washington” (2000) to the raucous stoner mayhem in “Pineapple Express” (2008) and most recently, “Prince Avalanche” (2013). “Joe” begins on a promisingly sober note as Gary (Tye Sheridan, filling a role similar to one in “Mud”), a youth of poor means, takes up a hatchet on a brush-clearing gig for Joe, whose reputation as an explosive ex-con is known throughout the depressed Texas enclave. Gary’s amid a lot of people who look like they know Joe from his days behind bars, but they’re all hard-working now and focused.
If you haven’t read Faber’s novel and have no discerning of its plot, educate yourself no more; going in less educated will yield you a better viewing experience. Glazer’s arcane imagery and Mica Levi’s all-consuming score forge an indelible confluence that is not your typical cinematic fare. Sure, there are arguably three acts, but it’s more a washing over than a sum of parts with a resolution; when “Skin” does subscribe to these traditional framework devices, that’s when it starts to loose its sheen and transcendent allure.
The film opens energetically enough, with Law’s Hemingway barking out poetic praise for his “cock.” Where he is and who is worshiping his manhood becomes quickly apparent. Dom’s shortly thereafter released from a 12-year prison stint and sets his sights immediately on the guy who married his ex-wife and cared for her when she became stricken with cancer and died. Dom sees it as the guy stole his wife (even though they were long divorced) and gives the unfortunate bloke the punishment an angry weightlifter would give the cable guy should he find him in bed with his wife.
The plus is that Joe’s flashbacks are closer in time to the now and Gainsbourg, an immensely talented and game actress, is able to play her younger self instead of relying on Stacy Martin, a ravishing but largely wooden prop who only seems to have a flicker in her eye when sucking cock. Gainsbourg too gets a workout – double penetration with two Africans who can’t speak English (she needs a translator to set up the sexcapade) – and goes into the loan-collecting business (for Willem Dafoe, almost as sinister as he was in “The Grand Budapest Hotel”), in which her newly learned talents in B&D extract funds quicker than a brutal bruising.
No, it’s not the first time Luna has been in the director seat, but it somewhat feels so. Biopics in general are stilted; there is little element of surprise. That’s not to say they can’t be lit up with the right director or actor – take “Norma Rae” or “Erin Brockovich,” but those films were directed by master filmmakers (Martin Ritt and Stephen Soderbergh) and actresses who took home Oscars (Sally Field and Julia Roberts), but the key to such a film is conflict and how the hero or heroine navigates adversity and perseveres. 
The most emblematic of von Trier’s vast filmography might be one of his lesser-known works: the 2003 curio “The Five Obstructions,” in which von Trier challenges mentor Jørgen Leth to remake his 1967 short film “The Perfect Human” five times, each with a new restricting specification. One obstruction has Leth make the film in the worst place on earth (the slums of Mumbai) and another has him do it as animation (a form both directors detest); and with each new needling hurdle he lays down, von Trier grins with impish glee while shoveling mounds of caviar into his face. 
