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Jacob Elordi reveals personal reason for joining ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North': ‘It was something important to me'
Jacob Elordi reveals personal reason for joining ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North': ‘It was something important to me'

Yahoo

time03-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Yahoo

Jacob Elordi reveals personal reason for joining ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North': ‘It was something important to me'

Australian actor Jacob Elordi, known for his standout performances in Saltburn and Priscilla, takes on a harrowing new role as a World War II prisoner of war in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Based on Richard Flanagan's Booker Prize-winning novel, the Prime Video miniseries is set in Elordi's hometown and marks another major milestone in the actor's fast-rising career. Immediately after wrapping, the actor stepped into another demanding role — as the creature in Guillermo del Toro's upcoming adaptation of Frankenstein. Below, Elordi opens up about diving into the emotional and physical landscape of The Narrow Road, his experience returning to work in Australia and the unexpected connection between playing a POW and his role in Frankenstein. Gold Derby: What drew you to the role Lt. Col. Dorrigo Evans? More from GoldDerby 'Adolescence' soars past 'Stranger Things' to become Netflix's new No. 2 original show (behind only 'Wednesday') 'My Mom Jayne': Mariska Hargitay is reclaiming her family story in HBO doc about her iconic mother Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell take 'A Big Bold Beautiful Journey' in today's top stories Jacob Elordi: The director, Justin Kurzel, who was a filmmaker that I've been a fan of since I was probably 14 or 15 years old, sent me a letter asking if I wanted to take part in this miniseries for him. I would've been into whatever he sent me. I read the book immediately after the email and it was just one of those moments where you feel like you're being handed the role that you have wanted to play your whole life, with the filmmaker that I've wanted to work with my whole life. It was something that was important to me. How did you mentally and physically prepare for the role of Dorrigo? I flew to Melbourne to meet Justin and I was in a stage of when I sometimes get an email from a director like him and they're giving me a job, I think I'm going to lose it immediately. I get really, really worked up and nervous and I try to learn my lines to the movie before we even have a general meeting. I had a sack full of books that I'd read about medical surgeons and the Burma Railway and went to this meeting with him. He was just like, 'mate, we have a year and a half until we go.' But I just wanted him to not replace me without having met me. But then I was lucky to have the year after meeting him and talking about it to sort of let the book marinate for a month and then let the screenplay marinate for a bit more. By the time I got to Justin, I had all this reading, all these ideas, and I had all these things written down and he was like, forget your books. You have to be true. Justin provided this set, which was a live theater experience. It was like you had no choice but to be real because from the moment you came out of hair and makeup in your costume, we were marched to the set and as a unit. And then when we got there, the guards were already there before us, always in costume and in character. And something was happening on every corner of the set. What about the physicality of playing a prisoner of war? We had a six-week prisoner bootcamp basically. We were watched over by nutritionists and trainers. There's something that happens when you are hungry. All the extra things that you have in your day-to-day life that you worry about, they all sort of start to strip away. All you can think about are the men that are in front of you and if they're going to be okay and where your next meal is coming from. Something happens in the weight loss process that brings on the immediacy of the camps. All those boys, 20 something young men put their lives on hold for months and shredded their weight for it. I'm incredibly proud of all of them. What's the first thing you ate once shooting wrapped? I had sushi train, which is this, it's a train of sushi in Australia, but they do fried chicken in sushi. We were all so sick, our stomachs swelled down. We were texting each other, everyone was texting, I should not have had Mexican or I can't believe I've done this. What was it like for you personally to do an Australian production? It was something I've wanted to do for a really long time. And then it also kind of made me mad at all my friends who were American actors because I realized they were just using their own voices the whole time. It was the dawning of, I was like, oh, you not doing an accent when we act. That's crazy. Just kind of immediacy of just your lines coming out of your mouth, not having to go through a toll road to get there. It was a relief. What was it like to step out of this role and right into the role of the monster in Guillermo del Toro's ? About halfway through filming the death camps, I got a phone call and I was on my way home and they were like, you need to read this by 11 p.m. and it's Guermillo del Toro's Frankenstein. I read it and then spoke to him and then found out that I was making Frankenstein maybe three or four weeks after I wrapped. I had this wonderful thing happen, which is probably saying too much, but there was this thing that happened in the process where I got to kill Dorigo in a way, who was the closest thing to a man, that I've gotten to play in my career in a lot of ways. And so I got to die as a man and then kind of be reborn in this creature, which is this character that is totally starting from scratch. So I have to rebuild myself physically and spiritually and mentally through playing the creature so strangely, they're actually connected. And it sounds a little bit like hippy dippy, but it really, going from the hunger into that, it really was this one process. So I got to kind of let it go that way. Best of GoldDerby Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez on how the 'Agatha All Along' cast 'became a coven' when recording 'The Ballad of the Witches' Road' Jason Schwartzman on the breakneck 'Mountainhead' production: 'I've never done anything like it in my life' 'Étoile' creators say cinematographer M. David Mullen was their 'film school' Click here to read the full article.

‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North' Producers On Bringing Richard Flanagan's Epic Book to the Screen: 'A Really Important Australian Story'
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North' Producers On Bringing Richard Flanagan's Epic Book to the Screen: 'A Really Important Australian Story'

Yahoo

time30-04-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Yahoo

‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North' Producers On Bringing Richard Flanagan's Epic Book to the Screen: 'A Really Important Australian Story'

The television adaptation of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan's epic Booker Prize-winning war novel, debuted on Amazon Prime Video on April 18. As befits the cultural importance of the book to Australians, the series stars arguably the country's buzziest male actor Jacob Elordi and is also helmed by one of its most important filmmakers Justin Kurzel. But Narrow Road's decade-long journey to the screen has been a long and arduous one. Published in 2013, Flanagan's WWII-set book follows Dorrigo Evans, an Australian surgeon haunted by a wartime love affair and his brutal experiences as a POW forced to build the Thai-Burma Death Railway under Imperial Japanese command. The novel shifts between Dorrigo's youth, including a summer affair with his uncle's young wife, the horrors of his captivity, and his later, unfulfilled life, exploring memory, trauma, and the fragility of human dignity. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'The Gardener' Producer José Manuel Lorenzo to Receive Conecta Fiction & Entertainment Honor Netflix Sets Four New Series Made in Mexico, Including 'Santita' With Gael Garcia Bernal 'How to Have Sex' Director Molly Manning Walker Heads Up Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Flanagan was inspired to write Narrow Road by his father's experience as a prisoner of war who was forced to work the Burma Death Railway. The book received worldwide acclaim, selling more than a million copies in over 42 countries, won both the 2014 Man Booker Prize and Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, and cemented Flanagan's reputation as arguably Australia's greatest living author. Given the praise and international success of Narrow Road, it was inevitable there would be keen interest in adapting the book for the screen. In 2018, it was revealed that FremantleMedia Australia had secured the rights to the book with the intention of creating a miniseries. A year later, Justin Kurzel, the Aussie auteur behind Snowtown, True History of the Kelly Gang and Nitram, and his writing partner Shaun Grant were announced to be boarding the project to create their first work for television. And then nothing. The project was stuck in limbo due to leadership changes at Fremantle and also the production shut downs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After the rights lapsed, Flanagan approached Jo Porter, a former exec at Fremantle, who had established a new production company, Curio Pictures. With Kurzel and Grant still attached, the long delay was also fortuitous as it meant that Elordi, basking in the success of his turns in Euphoria, Priscilla and Saltburn, had come of age and was ideally suited to take on the role of Dorrigo Evans. As well as being Kurzel's first TV project, the series had added significance as Elordi was coming home to star in his first major Australian production. Over a decade after the book was published, the first two episodes of the five-part miniseries of Narrow Road premiered at this year's Berlin Film Festival, to gushing praise from critics. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Curio's Porter and Rachel Gardner and Amazon MGM Studios' head of Australian originals Sarah Christie about the long journey to the screen for Flanagan's book and its importance to modern notions of Australian identity, brining Elordi home and working with the actor who is at an 'inflection point' in his career and the heightened interest in Kurzel's first television project. Jo, I know originally adaptation was a Fremantle show, and you were at Fremantle previously. Did you take the show with you when you created Curio? JO PORTER Rachel and I when we both left our respective places of employment to join up forces and start Curio Pictures, which is a Sony production entity here. We often lamented the golden handcuffs of those projects that you put your heart and soul in that you have to leave behind and for me, the one that was really, really hard to leave behind was Narrow Road, but the opportunity for the new venture was there, so you have to move on. We started Curio up in the middle of 2021 and then towards the end of that year, I got a call literally out of the blue from Richard Flanagan saying — because COVID happened and that slowed everything down — 'hey, the rights have lapsed, [he asked] would you consider taking it on.' Personally, it was like oh my god, that is just extremely exciting. Rachel and I were still developing our slate, it was our first project, so it was before [Disney+ series] Artful Dodger. RACHEL GARDNER Curio had just formed, and Jo rang me. I was at the end of my time at [See-Saw Films]. I'd done all my gardening leave, and I was like, '[Justin Kurzel] and [Shaun Grant] doing The Narrow Road to the Deep North. What!? Wow, like what does that look like?' Really intriguing. So Kurzel and Grant were still attached when the rights lapsed? PORTER Yes. After I'd left [Fremantle] they continued and there was a lot of prior relationships but also trust between [Richard Flanagan, Kurzel and Grant] in the project. GARDNER We were really excited to take that it on. It was really important for us to make a statement for Curio with a really important Australian story. It's the type of show we want to be known for making out of Australia with the best of the best of Australian talent and working with great partners to take Australian content to a broad audience and a global one as well, not just a local one for us. The international aspect is interesting to me, given the talent involved and the book it is adapted from, the miniseries seems to have a lot of awards potential… PORTER You make it for an audience, to be honest. As producers, that's where our ambition sits, but we do believe that it has strong elements. I think particularly taking a filmmaker like Justin into the television sphere, this is his first sojourn. Also things like the Berlinale and the incredible honor of having the gala screening there [at the Berlin Film Festival]. Like Rachel said, I was intrigued to see what a Justin Kurzel television piece could look like. [Going back to] Berlinale, we got an encouraging response out of that. But you never make something thinking it's going to be awards bait. What is thrilling is when all the pieces coalesce, the ambition of your commissioning partner comes together as well, and it is just alchemy, and then if it also has [awards] potential, well, isn't that sweet? Personally, I believe every single person that's worked on it deserves the most enormous award because of their contribution. Sarah, in the timeline for the series adaptation of , where does Amazon come in? When did you guys start looking at this, and this actually this works for us as well? SARAH CHRISTIE I think it was late 2022 when Jo, Rachel and I started talking about the different things that we could potentially do together, and Narrow Road was just one of those projects that is absolutely gold in terms of speaking in a deep way to an Australian audience and then also the the international potential. Richard's novel is absolutely exquisite and when they brought around the project it was a huge draw card for us. Sitting down and reading Shaun's script for the first time — we read a lot of scripts like every single day — and when one sort of shines through, you know quite quickly that it's something we just had to bring onto the slate. Justin, Shaun and Curio's vision: we were really interested in seeing how these brilliant filmmakers were taking a new step in their ambition in telling a story that was going to be incredibly grounded, authentic and real. But it also has these elements of like lightness that came through, in the hope, in the love story that really enables people, particularly the character of Dorrigo, to survive the most horrific experiences. So we were so excited about the vision that this story in terms of the tonal balance. And then having Jacob Elodi attached already at the point when we first started talking about this project, for us really just cemented the potential to reach a really broad audience. Jacob was at a really incredible inflection point in his career, having made his mark in Euphoria and Saltburn and then wanting to sort of come home [to Australia] to work with this incredible team of the best Australian filmmakers working today and take on a very challenging but incredible role. There's also the fans of the novel, which we already know exist, which is a big drawcard again. We're speaking already to a very active and passionate audience and then having someone like Jacob come on board really for us felt like we were going to broaden out and really speak to a younger audience as well. Jacob is an incredible actor, and his performances have really resonated a lot with younger audiences. This story is actually about what young young people went through, so we were just very excited about the potential to speak to a really broad Australian audience. PORTER [The role of Dorrigo] was such a hard role to cast. To find someone that could carry a piece like this, that could be someone that could unlock the finance for this project, authentically play the role and be a leader amongst many. [Those types of actors] don't just fall off trees, and it's almost like we had to wait until Jacob was the right age to play the part. He speaks so beautifully about his love of the novel, but also of work of Justin and it was always his dream to work with him and so it feels like serendipity. As Sarah said, he's at the inflection point of his career, he just committed to it. That would have been in 2022, and he was prepared to wait 12 months until we started filming, which is a big commitment. GARDNER It probably wasn't the most popular opinion, really [for Elordi to take on this project]. An Australian TV series at that point in his career, it was a risk and obviously a very calculated one. We're really pleased that he's so proud of the series. Can we talk a little about the casting in general? There's a couple of stand out people in the cast, like Simon Baker, I mean he's incredible in this. But also Thomas Weatherall, the actor who plays Frank Gardiner, a similarly incredible performance. PORTER We had an incredible casting director, but it also speaks to the power of Justin to be the honeypot that they all adore working with. And then the material itself, there are a lot of meaty roles there to play. GARDNER And this speaks to Richard and the absolute beauty of the book, where even though it's relatively small roles like the one that [Simon Baker] played the characterization of that character Keith — who actually is quite different than the book, funnily enough — the characterization of everyone, is just so sharply drawn and that is really attractive to actors to play. Were there like specific production challenges you guys had? Obviously there's trying to recreate Myanmar in Australia, but also the torture scenes — which were hard to watch — how did you film those? GARDNER Practically speaking in terms of structuring the production, we had a lot of very real constraints such as Jacob's time, Simon's time, Odessa's time, also having to structure the weight loss [the boys in the camps go through]. But because we had one director, we were able to shoot it like a film. So we could shoot our actors and locations and because of how the timelines were split, it was actually relatively easy to structure and the stars were all aligned. Ultimately people's availability sort of neatly slotted into those areas. PORTER [Regarding where we shot the production] it did create decision [for us]. Do you travel around and find the locations potentially interstate or not, and we decided that we would base out of Sydney and find the locations around there. There was some away filming, but that was both creatively led and also because of the financing, it often makes more sense in Australia to just shoot within one state. GARDNER We had a lot of support from New South Wales, the state went above and beyond and we really needed it with the financing. PORTER If we couldn't make it work, we would have had to find another solution, but we felt we could find the best creative outcome by basing it [in New South Wales] and it also working within the financing model. GARDNER [The shoot] was really tough. Those boys were really hungry and a little bit hangry, some of them were shredding over Christmas. PORTER Justin is a very visceral truth telling director in his approach to filmmaking and I think actors really enjoy that as an experience, but it's why he's unflinching., his unflinching storytelling both in beauty and also in the horror, I think really shines through. With historical dramas, there are always nitpickers, people who pick holes in things, especially in terms of adaptating a famous book. For me, I noticed that some of the dialogue, there seemed to be some linguistic anachronims. Was that done deliberately? PORTER We didn't want to make a stuffy study, you want to feel these these women and men were alive and bled and [you want to] care for them. It's not meant to be a documentary, it is an examination extremists and and the worst and the best of humanity. That's the lens through which it [depicts] the war and the fire that Dorrigo has to walk through. It's important for the visceral nature of war and the hardship to be accurate, so everybody worked deeply hard to get right the truth of that lived experience. But yes, I think some liberties were probably taken in expression. GARDNER I think it's also really important to make things for an audience. We really want to find a broad audience, and Gen Z is a really massively important audience. We had to open it up. It's so easy to make period piece and there's a veneer of untouchability that you just can't quite necessarily get through. [Justin] has made something that's quite emotionally accessible. Sarah, for Amazon Prime Video Australia, is clearly a very big prestige show, and it has the ingredients and star power to attract an international audience. Are you looking to commission and produce more of these types of prestige dramas? Or was it just a one-off, the chance came up to grab and you had to take it? CHRISTIE When we're looking to curate our slate of Australian originals, we're really looking to cater to a broad Australian audience and have [programming] that speaks to everyone across the board, and across our scripted strategy, film, unscripted. Narrow Road was just one of those projects that really stood out to us, for its prestige quality but also this story in of itself and the team behind it to deliver, we really felt like this could be a big moment for us in terms of our slate and drive conversation. We were speaking about it being a historical piece and I think we were really interested in an important Australian story that hasn't been told that many times and particularly in this way, so we felt there was something there to really bring and connect with Australian customers and also people internationally. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained

‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North' Review: Jacob Elordi in Justin Kurzel's Haunting Contemplation of the Losses of Love and War
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North' Review: Jacob Elordi in Justin Kurzel's Haunting Contemplation of the Losses of Love and War

Yahoo

time15-02-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Yahoo

‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North' Review: Jacob Elordi in Justin Kurzel's Haunting Contemplation of the Losses of Love and War

Following Nitram and The Order, Justin Kurzel goes from strength to strength with his riveting first detour into episodic television, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. While a current of unflinching violence runs through the director's work, seldom if ever has the blunt shock of bloodletting played in such haunting counterpart to the pathos of brutalized humanity as it does in this adaptation of Richard Flanagan's 2014 Booker Prize-winning novel. There's a lingering soulfulness here that feels new to Kurzel's work, distilled in an intensely moving lead performance from Jacob Elordi. Big, bold and strikingly cinematic, the limited series' first two of five 45-minute episodes were presented as a special gala at the Berlin Film Festival ahead of its Australian premiere on Prime Video in April. Most other major markets will follow, though Sony has not yet closed a deal for U.S. rights. With Elordi's star on the rise, that can only be a matter of time, even if the slangy vernacular of the wartime sections will require subtitles. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Mickey 17' Review: An Amusing Robert Pattinson Gamely Tackles a Double Role in Bong Joon Ho's Scattershot Sci-Fi Follow-Up to 'Parasite' Ben Whishaw on Becoming Peter Hujar in Ira Sachs' Vivid Snapshot of '70s Manhattan Rupert Friend Wants a Berlin Do-Over Another recurring theme in Kurzel's work represented here is the formation of a national Australian identity and the role played by traumatic episodes in the country's history. The horrific experiences of prisoners of war forced by the Japanese to work as slave labor on the Thailand-Burma railroad during World War II is another painful chapter, given added resonance by the reluctance of many who served and were captured during that conflict to speak or write about it in the decades that followed. Based on the first 90 minutes, The Narrow Road to the Deep North has potential to stand alongside films like Peter Weir's Gallipoli and Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant as a nuanced and compassionate study of Australians at war. Skillfully adapted by Kurzel's frequent collaborator Shaun Grant, the drama benefits from the highly personal feel of the material. That was perhaps inevitable given that Flanagan's inspiration for the novel came from his father's experience as a survivor of what became known as 'Death Railway,' on which Grant's grandfather also worked as a POW. Kurzel's grandfather also was a WWII veteran, one of the so-called 'Rats of Tobruk,' the Australian-led division that defended the North African port city from siege by German and Italian forces. Elordi plays Dorrigo Evans, a medical student who joins Australia's Armed Forces and loses his first casualties as his company advances through Syria toward the frontline in 1941. The explosion that kills two soldiers is right in Kurzel's visceral wheelhouse, as is the barbaric treatment of the captured troop two years later. Jammed into a sweltering train compartment like livestock and transported to Thailand, they are put to work by Japanese officers, clearing jungle and constructing track for the railway, which is to stretch for almost 260 miles. Following the prologue in Syria, Grant's script jumps between three different time periods, with the 1943 POW scenes providing the spine. In 1940, Dorrigo is a handsome young transplant from rural Tasmania, with a steamy sexual connection to his girlfriend Ella (Olivia DeJonge), who comes from a wealthy Melbourne family. Her eagerness to marry prods him to propose, even if there's a vague sense that he's not ready. Around the same time, he drives out to a country pub owned by his gregarious Uncle Keith (Simon Baker). Keith is absent when Dorrigo gets there, but he meets the woman his family has referred to as his uncle's 'too young' wife, Amy (Odessa Young). The flirty chemistry between them sets off instant sparks. In 1989, Dorrigo (played with a brooding demeanor in his senior years by Ciarán Hinds) has settled in Sydney in a fancy piece of waterfront real estate. He's a successful surgeon, still married to Ella (Heather Mitchell) but having an affair with Lynette (Essie Davis), the wife of his medical colleague Rick (Dan Wyllie). Throughout the wartime scenes, we catch glimpses of a soldier known as Rabbit (William Lodder) filling his artist's sketchbook with pencil and paint studies of his comrades. Intended to stand as a record of what took place there, the pictures have an awful beauty, expressing in images what words cannot. There's a slight Francis Bacon aspect to them, poetic but at the same time incontrovertibly real, depicting every distorted limb, every haggard face and emaciated body, every wound and scar. Dorrigo is roped in, seemingly by Ella, to help with the launch of a book of Rabbit's art 50 years later. But he's spiky in interviews and reluctant in the speech he's writing to tell the stories of heroism and mateship that seem to be Australians' only interest in accounts of war. While the time-jumping structure can be mildly confusing at first, editor Alexandre de Franceschi establishes a graceful rhythm, keeping the transitions fluid. Dorrigo's involvement with the book launch stirs up vivid memories of his time in the Thai jungle, lobbying in vain with the Japanese command to improve conditions for the men, many of them suffering from dysentery, malnutrition and malaria. But despite deaths among the POWs, Colonel Masaki Kota (Taki Abe), under pressure from Tokyo and aware that they have insufficient men to complete the mammoth task, insists on using cruel punishment as motivation for them to work harder. While collecting materials in the jungle to build the soldiers' camp, Dorrigo glimpses another group of POWs through the trees. Their skeletal bodies and ghostly faces suggest they have been there considerably longer, giving the medical officer a preview of his worst fears for his men. Interwoven with those painful memories are moments from his affair with Amy the summer before he shipped out. They serve as a kind of balm for terrible reality in 1943, and in 1989, a source of deep melancholy that makes it clear Dorrigo never felt the same passion for another woman. In a prophetic prewar scene, he runs into Amy in a bookshop after their brief first encounter at the pub. She notes that he's reading Catullus and responds by showing him her favorite poem, just three words long, by Sappho: 'You burn me.' Elordi, arguably never better, plays the soft-spoken younger Dorrigo with sensitivity and genuine love and concern for his fellow soldiers. There's an understated gravitas to his performance that feeds directly into Hinds' typically authoritative work, portraying him as a hardened man forever burdened by survivor's guilt. DeJonge and Mitchell find similar continuity between the younger and older Ella, showing how her rosy view of her new husband mellowed into a somber acceptance of his walled-off nature. Early on, Keith compares the rangy Dorrigo to Errol Flynn — one of Australia's early exports to Hollywood. But there's no trace of dashing bravado or heroics in Elordi's performance, which is grounded, mature and subtle in its communication of unspoken feeling. Young is lovely as Amy, making her an untamable spirit who takes the lead in seducing Dorrigo — to the tune of Leslie Hutchinson's 1936 recording of 'These Foolish Things' and the light-headedness of too much whiskey — but nonetheless maintains her own kind of loyalty to Keith. Baker follows Limbo with another almost unrecognizable turn that solidifies his rewarding pivot into character parts. Davis, who has been married to Kurzel for more than 20 years, is wonderful as always, and Wyllie, another Australian treasure of screen and stage, makes you hope we'll see more of his character in the remaining episodes. Among the soldiers, Thomas Weatherall brings individualistic flavor and warmth to Frank, whose quirky sense of humor extends to taking bets on his survival chances; and David Howell has some of the most wrenching scenes as the ironically nicknamed Tiny, a colossus of a man brought down by illness and inhumanity. The most intriguing of the Japanese cast is Kasamatsu (a principal character on Max's Tokyo Vice) as Major Nakamura, a thoughtful man who seems resistant to Colonel Kota's instruction to be more merciless. His exchanges with Dorrigo suggest a relationship that will evolve in future episodes. We read the discomfort on his face as Koto addresses the POWs, who are basically slaves, insisting that there is honor in the work they are doing for the glory of Japan. On the craft side, Alice Babidge's understated production and costume design distinguish each period without fuss, while there's impressive depth of field and interesting compositions in cinematographer Sam Chiplin's widescreen images. As usual with the director's work, a full-bodied, mood-shifting score by his younger brother Jed Kurzel is a major contribution, particularly unsettling in its use of dissonance in the Thai scenes. History experts may take issue, as they did with the book, that the Australian POWs were a significantly smaller part of the railway workforce than Southeast Asian civilians captured and exploited by the Japanese. But neither the novel nor the series require justification for keeping the focus trained on Australian soldiers whose sacrifice and suffering are an unerasable part of the country's blood-stained past. The book is a towering achievement in Australian fiction, widely recognized as a classic of war literature and a work of national cultural importance — not to mention a gripping, psychologically complex read. No doubt the creative team felt a responsibility to get it right, and based on what's been seen so far, they appear to have accomplished that. 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