The Narrow Road To The Deep North - Review 

Rating: 4 out of 5

HARROWING probably doesn’t quite do justice to the feeling of watching this WWII drama from Justin Kurzel. But given the importance of the story it tells, and the real-life suffering endured by its central characters, it’s a worthy description and justifiably earned.

Based on the novel of the same name by Australian author Richard Flanagan, the limited series (shown on the BBC) essentially tells the story of a doctor haunted by memories of a love affair with his uncle's wife and of his subsequent experiences as a Far East prisoner of war during the construction of the Burma Railway.

A third timeframe shows him grappling with his trauma as well as to his rising celebrity in the face of a turbulent time in his career.

Jacob Elordi plays the central character, Dorrigo Evans, as a young man, while Ciaran Hinds stars as his older self. Of the other primary cast members, Odessa Young plays Amy Mulvaney, Dorrigo’s main love interest, and Simon Baker is his uncle, Keith (Amy’s bar owner husband).

In book form, The Narrow Road To The Deep North was critically acclaimed and won the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Its TV adaptation has deservedly attracted similar acclaim and could well back that up with awards.

It’s a complex character study that also serves as a searing anti-war commentary, a passionate love story and a general examination of humanity at its best and worst.

The scenes set amid the building of the Burma railway are genuinely hard to watch, as the Australian captives gradually become more and more emaciated and prone to life-threatening disease (cholera, dysentery, fever and malnutrition). While struggling to exist, they also face the various atrocities meted out to them by their Japanese captors, including beheadings, flogging and regular humiliation.

Kurzel’s direction is unflinching without being exploitational, capturing the true horror of survival in the camp - a camp where Japanese officers were often as harsh to their own soldiers as they were to the PoWs.

But it also doesn’t paint anyone in caricature. For sure, we’re in no doubt about the evil that exists in men’s hearts (particularly when exposed to war) but the screenplay isn’t afraid to probe the morality and ethics of both sides.

A conversation between two Japanese officers (now on the run for war crimes) asks what is worse: the death (by beating) of one PoW or the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (on innocent women and children). The easy answer, of course, is that both were wrong. And yet the spectre of history and the knowledge word who did and didn’t receive punishment/justice looms large.

Similarly, Kurzel - who admits to being personally invested in the story given that his grandfather was one of the ‘Rats of Tobruk’, an outnumbered garrison of Australian soldiers who held the Libyan deep-sea port for eight brutal months - isn’t afraid to confront the reality of surviving such punishing environments.

There’s a psychological toll that cannot easily be measured but which defines the lives of those who came home - as evidenced by the apparent coldness of Dorrigo’s post-war life (hauntingly evoked by Hinds).

As a war hero, Dorrigo continually wrestles with how much to reveal, and how much people actually want to know… while awaking every night from the recurring nightmares of his experiences on the railway. It’s a measured performance from Hinds - one that also includes a certain reckless egotism befitting his life as a top surgeon. Hence, he’s not always likeable, or even sympathetic, but he wears his pain with humility and dignity.

As the younger Dorrigo, Elordi also captures the gradual breakdown of his psychology brilliantly - navigating a fine line between being the chief point of contact between the PoWs and the Japanese, a medic and a soldier still clinging to a precarious hope of returning to Australia.

The war-weary person who does eventually return is a stark contrast to the man who departed - a lovestruck young man in the throes of a torrid sexual relationship with his uncle’s wife (Young, suitably seductive and tragic).

The scenes between them are couched in a sort of sun-soaked glow, evocative of classic Terrence (Tree of Life/Thin Red Line) Malick.. yet deliberately fantastical given the way that Dorrigo comes to use the romance as a lynchpin for his survival and an escape from his torment where possible.

Yet, again, neither Kurzel’s direction, nor Flanagan’s source text, offer too much in the way of optimism… Dorrigo’s journey eventually marked by tragedy and lost opportunity, with the collateral damage experienced by those around him.

The final moments of this drama genuinely linger and haunt, couched as they are in sadness.

But there’s a lasting power to this drama, too, as evidenced by the moving speech that Dorrigo gives to a social gathering at an event to mark the opening of an exhibition on the Burma railway, which expertly holds lessons for the world today: a world, sadly, still marked by the uncertainty of war and the atrocities that come with it.