SIEGEL: And you do a lot of rapid cutting between past and present, tricking us so when we cut from a torture scene in the '40s to a flash forward, Colin Firth is a much older man. What was it that would best honor his ability to forgive Nagase? It was always of great balancing act to provide the audience with the context of where Eric Lomax began this journey, from being tortured by the Japanese - not going too far to make it, you know, inaccessible for an audience, but also giving them a very clear idea that what he was able to do came from a very, very difficult place, so that the audience understands what he went through, which only adds greater value to what he achieved. And so I really focused on the idea of what value - and what honored the incredible place that Eric Lomax got to in reconciling with this most hated enemy that he had this incredible pent-up anger and hatred for, for many years. TEPLITZKY: I guess I approached it with the idea that what the story we were telling, for me, was always about the very best and the very worst of what human beings were capable of. So you had a challenge here, which is a morally uplifting film with graphic torture scenes at the heart of it. SIEGEL: This is a story of reconciliation, the impact of which you can only understand in light of how atrociously Lomax was treated. SIEGEL: The director of "The Railway Man" is Jonathan Teplitzky, who is Australian, who joins us from New York. Here are Firth and the Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada, as Nagase. This was the fictionalized setting for the great David Lean movie "Bridge on the River Kwai." Well, now, "The Railway Man" is a movie, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. Eric Lomax wrote about this in his book, "The Railway Man." He was a lifelong railroad enthusiast, and he and his fellow POWs were forced to work on the notorious Bangkok-to-Rangoon railroad. SIEGEL: When you were tortured, I measured your pulse. I mean, when you were tortured, you know, I measured your pulse. When they reunited, a documentary crew was there to capture an extraordinary moment of contrition and reconciliation. ![]() ![]() Takashi Nagase was a Japanese soldier and an English-language interpreter for the men who tortured Lomax. In 1942, the Scotsman, Eric Lomax, had been a prisoner of war and a victim of torture. In 1995, two men whose paths had crossed more than half a century before, met in Thailand: one a Scotsman, the other Japanese. From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
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