Variety reports that Rachel Weisz will star opposite Colin Firth in The Railway Man, to be directed by Jonathan Teplitzky. The movie is based on the best-selling autobiography by Eric Lomax which is described as follows:
Throughout his childhood Eric Lomax possessed a passion for trains. In an ironic twist of fate, he was captured by the Japanese during World War II and sent to Thailand to work on the infamous Burma-Siam railroad, the barbaric project that claimed the lives of 250,000 men. There he constructed a radio to bring news of the war and secretly drew a map of the railroad. For this, Lomax suffered brutal and incessant torture and interrogation. Standing by through it all was Nagase Takashi, a young Japanese soldier who translated the captor’s questions and Lomax’s replies. Fifty years later, Lomax sought out this Japanese tormentor, meeting him on a hillside overlooking the River Kwai Bridge. But Lomax’s object in meeting Takashi again was not revenge. It was reconciliation.
Here is a remarkable true story of forgiveness–a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past. A classic war autobiography, The Railway Man is a powerful tale of survival and of the human capacity to understand even those who have done us unthinkable harm.
Firth will play Lomax and Weisz his wife Patti. Jeremy Irvine has been cast as the younger Lomax during the WWII scenes.
The film, written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson, shoots next February in Australia, Thailand and the U.K.
(Photo Credit: Dominic Chan/ WENN.com)
