The Railway Man: Q&A with Andy Paterson and Patti Lomax
By Annette Graham, DC Film Society Member
A screening of The Railway Man (Jonathan Teplitzky, 2013) was held April 14 at the U.S. Navy Memorial Heritage Center. Screenwriter Andy Paterson and Patti Lomax (wife of Eric Lomax) were present to discuss the film and answer audience questions. The film is based on the autobiography of Eric Lomax, a British soldier during WWII who was a prisoner of war in a Japanese labor camp. Colin Firth and Jeremy Irvine play Eric Lomax and Nicole Kidman plays Eric's wife Patti.
Moderator: Movies are more immediate than words; was it difficult to see the terrible things that happened to Eric?
Patti Lomax: The first time I saw the film, I was more interested in seeing how the actors acted (audience laughts). I've seen the film several times since and the more I see it the more I'm drawn into it. I can't see it now without crying. I see so much of my husband in Colin Firth who has taken a lot of care in this film and got to learn my husband well and it shows. Personally, for me, it's a terrific film, because although it's a drama, there's so much truth in it.
Moderator: What drew you to this story?
Andy Paterson: The book is an extraordinary piece of writing and it tells such an extraordinary story that to begin with you shouldn't even think of touching this. There's certainly no reason to make the film unless you could do something that would help to extend the story and pass the story on. I think that was something Eric was very aware of. There were pieces of the story that were unresolved and Eric wrote half of the book--all the war stuff--in 1945 in Singapore and on the way home. He was very keen for people to know that it was a contemporary record, not an old man's revisionist view of what happened. And of course, the rest came later, but quite quickly after the events that it portrays. So we walked into a story that in some ways was still evolving. We walked into a story that neither Eric nor Patti could explain to us in a way that was enough to build on. How could you make a journey from wanting to kill this man to forgiveness? That was something that we had the great privilege of working out with them. And in doing that found a story that we felt worth telling in the film.
Moderator: You mentioned that it is beautifully written. The poem we hear at the beginning of the film and the end was written by Eric Lomax himself. It was something that he would recite to himself to keep himself together at difficult moments.
Patti Lomax: He wrote it when he was in captivity. He wrote poetry in his mind as a way to keep some sense and to get him through his terrible predicaments. That particular poem means a great deal to us.
Moderator: Have you heard from other people who might have gone through similar situations and have had difficulty talking about it?
Patti Lomax: It seems to be quite a common phenonemon even today with veterans coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq with similar problems to what Eric had. The general term is post-traumatic stress which is a term that personally I do not like. I think it would be far better to call it what it is: a war injury of the mind. I think there's less stigma attached to that. Somebody falling down stairs, having a bad fall can suffer from post traumatic stress. It is not the same as the injuries that veterans had inflicted upon them or that my husband and his generation had inflicted upon them. It is treatable. It is not a mental illness. I believe that veterans do feel there is a stigma with this terminology of post traumatic stress. It is a war injury just the same as if they had a limb blown off. Personallly I think it is time that we changed the emphasis. It is not a terrible disease of the mind. It is something caused by the situations that young people have found themselves in. It's alright to say that alcoholism can make this worse. What are the causes that make someone drink when they come home?
Moderator: He was just 22 when he was captured. So young and forced to tolerate things that I can't imagine.
Patti Lomax: I think perhaps in Eric's generation it was in a sense a more innocent time insomuch that they didn't see bad things on television, there weren't the games on the internet. But it's not the human condition to kill other people. They were trained to defend their countries and fight for a cause. But it doesn't prepare them for the human reaction to the things that they see and experience.
Audience Question: How long was your husband in captivity?
Patti Lomax: They were caught in Singapore in 1942 and the actual end of the war came in 1945. It wasn't so much the length of time, I think. It was more the dreadful conditions they found themselves in.
Moderator: When he was taken away for the interrogation he had no idea how long he was gone for. It was a couple of weeks, but he didn't have any idea how long he was gone.
Patti Lomax: I understand there were periods of unconsciousness and that didn't help as far as keeping track of the time.
Andy Paterson: There were beatings, interrogation and torture. But having beaten him almost to death, and tortured him, they put him in front of a court and sentenced him to 10 years in jail. It's extraordinary to me the way that we assume there can be some form of justice. In the book the real horrors begin when he goes into the jail in Bangkok. We showed a tiny tiny tiny fraction of what these people went through. The film is more powerful because the brutality is real. There are three or four or five minutes of violence. You can watch that but not two hours of relentless violence. We had to show something of what these people went through but couldn't show too much, or it would be unbearable.
Audience Question: Have you worked with current veterans in England who have experienced some of the horrors of war?
Patti Lomax: No, I haven't, but because of this film and the exposure I've had, I have been asked to help the charity Combat Stress who are the main people who help veterans coming back. So in the future I hope to have some input, but I'm not an expert. My expertise comes from living with someone who experienced this. I know too how hard it is for the people who are caring for them. It's a very lonely, frightening, confusing process because very often we don't know why our loved ones are behaving as they do.
Moderator: That's one of the reasons why this film is so important. We see films of soldiers coming back right after the war and dealing with it, but here it shows that decades later what happened to this man still affects him and those who love him. Sometimes these things go on for years and affect those around him. We don't see many films that tackle this far in the future of the aftermath.
Audience Question: Did he open up to you after this experience or did he continue to never talk about it?
Patti Lomax: No, it took about seven years before I knew what had caused Eric's problems. I was very aware that something really troubled him. I knew that he had been taken prisoner in Singapore but he couldn't talk to me or anybody else about his experience. Finally I convinced him that he needed to go for therapy. Fortunately there was a new charity in London called the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. They had started to help refugees from Iraq and the modern day people. They agreed to help my husband as the first person from the Second World War. They liked to have the families included in the counseling session because as we know, the victim affects those who live with him. It was over a period of expert psychiatry that his story was drawn from him. It took about two years. That's when I learned what happened to my husband.
Audience Question: What film festivals it has shown at and what plans do you have for international distribution? Will it be shown in Japan?
Andy Paterson: We premiered the film in Toronto last year. It did San Sebastian, Zurich, Lisbon and also Tokyo. We showed it at the Tokyo Film Festival last October. Patti and I were there just two weeks ago doing press in the lead up to release next week in Tokyo. Obviously it's a very very sensitive subject. It's a period of history that is basically unknown to many Japanese. We got to know Japanese actors very well and they were very helpful to us just in bringing us up to speed with what they knew and what they felt the reaction would be in Japan. To our surprise, the Japanese journalists were pushing Patti to use her position as the widow of someone who found forgiveness for the Japanese soldier to say to the Japanese people, "Please learn from your history. Please at least acknowledge these events, not because we want to blame you for them or because we don't understand that Japanese soldiers were under other kinds of pressure, but because you need to learn from your history." So the film will either be pushed under the carpet there or it will become part of the conversation. It's too soon to say.
Audience Question: Did the suicide of Finlay happen or was it a trigger for the plot?
Andy Paterson: There were a lot of suicides among those men. It was a question that we talked to Eric about. Having heard all those stories we were dealing with something very important to us. The instinct for survival is very strong; look around at what human beings go through and still survive. Frank [Cottrell Boyce], my co-writer, and I found it impossible to believe that the ordinary Japanese guy was any different from anyone else in terms of survival instinct. That became a big theme in the movie in terns of the way Eric and Nagase confront each other and how Eric throws back at Nagase, "You treated us like animals because we surrendered and yet when the war ended, you didn't die." We were so moved by the number of people who gave up and just couldn't survive any longer. Eric was one of the very few lucky enough to have a chance for happiness. Because of Patti, because of her strength, because she had fallen in love and was determined to get him back. We tried to join all those pieces together. So we used Finlay as that final push.
Moderator: Eric was interested at a young age in railways. It's an irony that this is what he had to work on as a POW.
Patti Lomax: Yes indeed. It was something that started with Eric as a child in the steam engine period. He was not a train spotter but he loved the engineering behind these huge powerful engines. He was very intrigued by the history of the transfer from the mail being delivered by stage coach and then being taken over by the rail system.
Audience Question: How did you decide to lay out the film and the transitions between the war and the 1980s. Did Colin and Jeremy [Irvine] ever talk to each other to see how they should portray the same character?
Andy Paterson: Eric was in fact a Scot and there was a big decision to make about whether they should try to do a Scots accent. I didn't want it because I've worked with actors who've tried to do accents before. It takes a big piece of their energy to have to concentrate on that. They worked with a dialect coach for awhile together so that Colin and Jeremy would sound the same. And Jeremy was able to study Colin quite a bit. Colin says that Jeremy does a better Colin Firth than he does these days (audience laughs). They had a lot of time together. In terms of the structure--one of the problems with writing the story is that everyone is going to know the ending. The book has been out for years. You can't hide the fact that it's a story about reconciliation. Initially we tried to write a script that was the book--a linear "young man goes to war" and play that out as it goes. A fundamental rule of screenwriting is that you have to find tension. You have to find a way to make the audience want to know what is going to happen. So I was very very keen that Patti's story should be a much bigger part of it than what was in the book. But what that also gave me was somebody who had to find out what was happening. I didn't want to do a flashback structure, start at the beginning and see bits and pieces. I had a rule that I would never change the timeline or the point of view unless there was a very strong narrative reason to do it. Whether I achieved that is for others to decide. But she gave me a structure where you have two people meeting. And this was very very true to the story. In that first section they meet and he is astonished by her and somehow finds a happiness that he had for a few months. They get together and although it's hard to explain, suddenly that commitment--he knows deep down what he became on that torture table and could never be loved, the nightmares return and he tries to push her away. The point of view is switched and she has to find out what is going on. She pushes Finlay, a decision has to be made. She has to wait. Is it okay to give this piece of information to Eric. What will happen? Then it plays out. So, the structure came out of the truth and suddenly there really was one of those eureka moments, when you think, that's the way you can tell the story. That script came together fairly quickly.
Moderator: Did both Jeremy and Colin spend time with your husband?
Patti Lomax: Indeed. Both of them came to our home two or three times. My husband had been ill for quite a number of years and we were not movie buffs at all. When Andy telephoned to say that the great Colin Firth agreed to play Eric in this film, instead of great joy in my family, it was "Oh, who's that?" (audience laughs). By sheer coincidence shortly after that the Daily Telegraph newspaper had a photograph of Colin and his wife on the front page and Eric said, "Patti, I think we've got somebody famous." When Colin first came to us there was no stardust involved. The two men, separated by a generation, were able to meet each other as human beings. It's true to say that with Colin's charm and expertise and Eric's willingness and curiosity about this person, they grew to trust and respect each other and became friends. And I think it shows in the film.
Audience Question: As you were writing the script, did you go back and watch The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)?
Andy Paterson: I didn't need to go back and watch it because I knew it very well. I must've seen it a dozen times. But I knew very well that every veteran on the campaign despised that movie. It's a great movie but it's a movie. And there are two sides to that: One is that it is a bunch of well-fed extras and a bunch of Brits teaching the Japanese how to build a railway which they certainly didn't need any help with. But for me the great tragedy of it was that it was the only document that existed that even dealt with that particular theater. So these men came back from the campaign that involved a kind of completely unwarranted shame. These men had been sent to Singapore, a city that was doomed before they got there. They were fighting and were told that they had surrendered. They went through these extraordinary horrors and came back to a country that didn't want to know that because it was somehow associated with something bad. And they bottle it up and live these miserable lives. Then they have to grow up with a bit of Hollywood entertainment that trivialized what they did and that made them shut up even more. One thing we vowed was that we wouldn't make this film unless we put it on the screen on a scale that showed what they had actually been through. We went to the real locations and we dug that railway out of the jungle. If it looks authentic it's because those are the rocks those men blew out of those cuttings, the rocks that they dynamited and broke up and every rock you see carried is a real rock. A sense of responsibility and finally doing justice to that story was something every single person on the film felt. It was a bit late. I wish I could have made it 10 years earlier. But we had a dozen veterans at the British premiere. It was worth it.
Moderator: Your husband saw some of the film being made. What did he think?
Patti Lomax: He did see it being made. With great effort, Andy's team managed to get him to see one of the scenes Colin shot. There is a short scene in the film of Colin looking out over the estuary and viaduct. He doesn't say a word but his face says it all. My husband was able to view that being shot. He said afterwards that it had been one of the happiest days of his life. But he died during the final edit. In a sense I think that perhaps it was a blessing because my husband believed that the film would be so well made, that he really didn't want to see it. He knew that it would contain some scenes of his past which he didn't want to revisit, but on the other hand, he was worried about what people would think if he didn't view it himself. Would it be because he didn't like it or it wasn't good enough? So it was a blessing in a sense that he didn't have to face that. He knew that the film was being made and was very pleased that it was being made. And he felt that it was a film not just about us but about many people who have gone through similar experiences.
The Railway Man opened in the DC area on April 25.
Calendar of Events
FILMS
American Film Institute Silver Theater
"Charlie Chaplin: The Tramp Turns 100" is a comprehensive look at Chaplin's features and short films. Features in May include The Circus, City Lights, Modern Times with shorts programs "Chaplin at Essanay," a collection of five short films, "Chaplin at National Part I" with 3 short films, and "Chaplin at Mutual Part I" with 3 short films. More in June.
"Shakespeare Cinema Part I" is a series of films based on Shakespeare's plays. Titles in May include Romeo and Juliet (1968), Henry V (1989), Throne of Blood, West Side Story, and 10 Things I Hate About You. More in June.
Titles in the series "Jane Fonda: Life Achievement Award Retrospective" include The Chase, Barefoot in the Park, They Shoot Horses Don't They, Barbarella, Coming Home and Klute with more in June.
"Studio Ghibli Encore" is a selection of films from the Ghibli Studio. Titles are Ponyo, The Secret World of Arrietty, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, The Cat Returns, Castle in the Sky and Porco Rosso. More in June.
Part II of the Burt Lancaster series continues. Titles for May are Seven Days in May, The Leopard, The Train, The Professionals, The Scalphunters, and Ulzana's Raid. More in June and July.
The DC Labor FilmFest is now held in the spring with films shown weekly. In May you can see Salt of the Earth, Note By Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, Dirty Pretty Things and Trash Dance. More in June.
"Action! The Films of Raoul Walsh Part II" presents more films by the action-master. Titles in May are Dark Command, High Sierra, The Strawberry Blonde, They Died with Their Boots On, White Heat, Colorado Territory, and Objective Burma. More in June and July.
"Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema" is co-presented by the National Gallery of Art. Titles in May include The Saragossa Manuscript, Innocent Sorcerers, The Hourglass Sanatorium, The Wedding with more in June.
The 48 Hour Film Project takes place in May with films screening May 8-11 with the "best of" on May 30.
Special events in May include APP, Separate But Equal, Godzilla, Sabrina, Goldfinger, Funny Girl, Rear Window, Cabaret and The Godfather Part II.
Freer Gallery of Art
The "Cinema Nocturnes" is a series of films featuring cities at night, to accompany the exhibit "An American in London: Whistler and the Thames." Opening the series on May 2 at 8:30pm is Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950), set in London and held in conjunction with the City Nights Open House. On May 4 at 2:00pm is Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) set in Tokyo. On May 11 at 1:00pm is Friday Night (Claire Denis, 2002) shown with Night and Day (Chantal Akerman, 1991) at 3:00pm. On May 16 at 7:00pm is Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993).
On May 18 at 2:30pm is Rikyu (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1989) following a tea tasting at 1:00pm.
"An Evening with Charles Lim Li Yong" includes a selection of short films presented by filmmaker Yong, a former professional sailor.
National Gallery of Art
"Artists, Amateurs, Alternative Spaces: Experimental Cinema in Eastern Europe 1960-1990" is a series of independently made films produced outside the state-run studios. On May 3 at 3:30pm is a program of short films from the Balazs Bela Studios. On May 10 at 1:00pm is a program of short films. On May 17 at 2:00pm is a program of short films from 1970s Poland. On May 17 at 4:00pm are amateur Polish shorts from film clubs. On May 24 at 4:00pm are experimental films from Croatia and Serbia.
"Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema" is presented jointly with the AFI Silver Theater. On May 11 at 4:00pm is Austeria (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1982); on May 18 at 4:00pm is Pharoah (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1966, on May 25 at 4:30pm is A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988) and ohn May 31 at 2:00pm is Black Cross (Aleksander Ford, 1960). One more in June.
There are two special events: on May 4 at 4:30pm is The Great Flood (Bill Morrison, 2013) and The Magic Flute (Ingmar Bergman, 1975) on May 10 at 3:30pm and May 24 at 1:00pm.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
On May 22 at 8:00pm is Jellyfish Eyes (Takashi Murakami, 2013), introduced by the filmmaker, a fable about childhood fears.
National Museum of the American Indian
On May 16 at 7:00pm is Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau (Sam George, 2013), about the legendary surfer. Part of the "dinner and a movie" program.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
On May 18 at 1:00pm is a cine-concert. Andrew Simpson will provide music accompaniment for the silent version of Ben Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925).
Washington Jewish Community Center
On May 6 at 7:30pm is a musical The Troupe (Avi Nesher, 1978).
An Israeli TV series "Shtisel" will be shown on four days in May: May 5, 12, 19, 26, all at 7:30pm. Three episodes are shown each week, a series pass is available.
On May 18 at 3:30pm is The New Black (Yoruba Richen, 2013), about how the African American community is dealing with gay rights.
On May 20 at 7:30pm is Unorthodox (Anna Wexler, 2013), a documentary about how the filmmaker broke away from her Orthodox Jewish upbringing. She will present to discuss the film.
On May 27 at 7:30pm is The Ballad of the Weeping Spring (Beni Torati, 2012).
Goethe Institute
Films are shown in conjunction with the exhibit "Search for a New Sound: The Blue Note Photographs of Francis Wolff." On May 5 at 6:30pm is Blue Note-A Story of Modern Jazz (Julian Benedikt, 1996-97) and on May 12 at 6:30pm is One Night With Blue Note (John Jopson, 2004), both introduced by Larry Applebaum from the Library of Congress.
On May 19 at 6:30pm is As Time Goes By in Shanghai (Uli Gaulke, 2013), about a Chinese jazz band.
French Embassy
On May 13 at 7:00pm is La Fille du 14 Juillet (Antonin Peretjatko, 2013), a comedy.
The National Theatre
Films starring Paul Newman will be shown at the National Theatre during April and May. On May 5 at 6:30pm is The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973), on May 12 at 6:30pm is Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (James Ivory, 1990), and on May 19 at 6:30pm is The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1982).
National Archives
On May 9 at noon is Jazz Episode I (Ken Burns). Episodes II and III are on May 16 at 1:00pm and May 23 at noon.
On May 20 at 6:30pm is Solomon Northup's Odyssey (Gordon Parks, 1984). A discussion will follow with Warrington Hudlin, Khalil Gibran Muhammad and William Jelani Cobb.
On May 28 at 7:00pm is Freedom Summer (Stanley Nelson, 2013), to be introduced by the filmmaker.
On May 30 at noon is "Jazz Diplomacy," a program of short films about the use of jazz as a diplomatic tool during the Cold War era.
The Avalon
This month's French Cinematheque film is The French Minister (Bertrand Tavernier, 2013) May 21 at 8:00pm, a comedy based on the award-winning graphic novel by Abel Lanzac and starring Thierry Lhermitte. "Programmer's Choice" presents Hateship Loveship (Liza Johnson, 2013), based on a story by Alice Munro and starring Kristen Wiig on May 7 at 8:00pm. On May 15 at 8:00pm is Lost Town (Richard Goldgewicht and Jeremy Goldscheiderm 2012), a documentary about Trochenbrod, an all-Jewish town, followed by a discussion with the film's historical consultant and subject Avrom Bendavid-Val.
Italian Cultural Institute
On May 13 at 6:30pm is The Passion (Carlo Mazzacurati, 2010).
Anacostia Community Museum
On May 11 at 2:00pm is Been Rich All My Life (2006), a documentary with rare archival performances of the Silver Belles, tap dancers in 1930s Harlem. Discussion follows.
On May 14 at 11:00am is Bringing Cities to Life (2013), a documentary about how the quality of life in urban communities can be improved. Discussion after the film.
The Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital
On May 20 at 7:00pm is The New Black (Yoruba Richen, 2013), a documentary about how the African American community is dealing with gay marriage. A discussion follows with Samantha Masters.
"Twisting the Knife: Hitchcock's Scary Love Stories" begins May 30 at 7:00pm is Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). Discussion follows. More in June.
Bloombars
On May 6 at 7:00pm is Beyond the Cloud Yonaoshi 3.11 (Keiko Courdy, 2013), a documentary about Japan post Fukushima and the triple disaster of March 11, 2011 (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear accident).
Busboys and Poets
On May 19 at 6:30pm is Vow of Silence, followed by Q&A with the filmmaker and cast. At the 5th and K location.
Alliance Francais
On May 9 at 7:00pm is Elles starring Juliette Binoche.
FILM FESTIVALS
