It’s likely that you’ve seen posters of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, all over Sydney and in the five days since its release, it’s received rave reviews from critics. When I heard about this contemporary, four part series on the war, strictly shown from an Australian perspective, as a history fanatic I was sold. Especially due to the fact that I’ve never felt compelled to view iconic Aussie films like Peter Weir’s Gallipoli or Alister Grierson’s Kokoda – it’s simply not my first choice for weekend viewing (although, I promise I’ll get to it eventually).
Director Justin Kurzel’s show, based on Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize winning novel of the same name, is not centred on the soldiers on the battlefield, but on the Australian prisoners of war, who were tasked to build the notorious Burma “Death” Railway, intended to strengthen supply routes for the invasion of India in WWII. The sound of warfare may have been replaced by the sounds of a dense, remote forest, yet it’s an equally terrifying existence. The show has several eye-opening moments.
What it means to be a prisoner of war
The show is relentless in its portrayal of the brutality of the war. Straight up in Episode 1, the main character, medic Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi) arrives with other prisoners of war in Burma only to come face to face with an earlier batch of prisoners walking amongst the forests of the site. Kurzel takes great pains to portray them as ghostlike entities, their skeletal bodies shining against the dense shrubbery. These are men utterly deprived of the larrikinism central to the ANZAC legend.
Depiction of mateship
In the face of the violence inflicted by the Japanese officials, there’s a limit to mateship too. In a particularly brutal moment, a much loved character is brutally beaten in front of his mates, due to the insubordination of his fellow soldiers. Yet many are too afraid to help. Even Dorrigo Evans, who has been for the most part a trusted intermediary between the Japanese and the soldiers, can only helplessly watch.
The war through the eyes of a medic
What makes the show especially tough viewing is that whilst Dorrigo loves his fellow soldiers, he’s the one who often, due to impossible circumstances, sends them to their death. The decision on whether to operate or not, who to dedicate resources to, and who to send on gruelling missions, falls on his shoulders. The show is definitely not one for the squeamish. Amputations occur in tents with no anaesthesia, men are subject to flesh eating microorganisms, bear horrific injuries after being brutally beaten, and the list goes on.
The perspectives of the Japanese
Considering the recorded sadism of several of the Japanese officials, it would be much easier to typecast them as villains. Yet, Major Nakamura (Sho Kasamatsu) is at once a terrifying and sympathetic character who is subject to a suffocating amount of pressure to succeed for the sake of his country. On one hand, he is unmoved after watching malaria-ridden men stumble towards the main work site, but at the same time, the stakes he faces are clear. Get more done with fewer men, or else face the consequences.
However, like all historical depictions, it glosses over a few key facts. It fails to, for example, acknowledge that it wasn’t just Australians who built the railway. In fact a majority of the prisoners were Asians, including Tamilians from Malaysia. According to the National Museum of Australia, there were nearly 200,000 locals who became labourers and 60,000 Allied prisoners, of which 13,000 were Australian.
Whilst the show holds onto the themes of mateship and larrikinism which are central to the ANZAC legend, it is uninterested in merely providing a narrative of a war hero. Instead, it portrays the impossible conditions of warfare with startling nuance.
As one of the characters in the show states, “People need to know what it was like here.” The Narrow Road to the Deep North, does a good job of ensuring this.
