The Narrow Road to The Deep North Review: Jacob Elordi Astounds In Justin Kurzel바카라�s Stately, Somber World War II drama

We meet ex-Army Dorrigo Evans (Ciaran Hinds) in his seventies. An established surgeon, he lives in a swanky house with his wife, Ella (Heather Mitchell). However, the time he served as a doctor in World War II hasn바카라�t left him. Specifically the grueling months바카라�in which Dorrigo led fellow Australian prisoners of war in building the Burma-Thailand rail line for the Japanese바카라�clamber onto each of his waking thought and nightmares.

Through a prism of memories, The Narrow Road to the Deep North reflects on what we choose to shove behind us in the forgotten past and what we carry forth. Watching the series is like dipping into this maelstrom of thoughts and pangs jostling for attention. Teaming with his regular, Shaun Grant, who has adapted Richard Flanagan바카라�s Booker-winning novel, Justin Kurzel directs a staggering meditation on trauma, owning up to historical crimes, while never playing to sensationalist jingoistic beats. We are hauled back to the early 1940s. The young, dashing Dorrigo (Jacob Elordi) is stood in good stead by his long-time girlfriend, Ella (Olivia DeJonge) whose influential father secures his medical career.

Service at war beckons. He assures Ella nothing will happen to him since he바카라�s a doctor. Little does he anticipate what바카라�s to come. Before he gets on-ground, he바카라�s swept into a passionate secret romance with his uncle바카라�s new wife, Amy (Odessa Young). Women in the show don바카라�t fare much well in terms of finer variations. They are either bored, sullen housewives like Amy, cloistered in dried-up marriages and getting a spark in an illicit relationship, or steadfast, enduring partners like Ella. However, Young brings burnished, heated intensity and piercing ache to the ultimately star-crossed romance with Elordi바카라�s Dorrigo.

Dorrigo is a man haunted by memory. War is always pushing through to claim his running thoughts. His mind keeps racing back to the doomed jungle, the many fallen men in his squad. His wife calls him the loneliest man she has ever known. He바카라�s always elsewhere, a drifting shadow of the past. Whenever he바카라�s asked about his wartime experience, he shuts down, scowling. Everyone only expects tales of 바카라�heroes and mateship,바카라� he remarks. What of the soul, of which just a shell remains?

Grant바카라�s screenplay doesn바카라�t so much spin through the three time-frames as it wends between, clasping for Dorrigo바카라�s silent wounds. Horrors he바카라�d witnessed decades ago hang heavy on his soul, demanding acknowledgement. 바카라�It바카라�s not a railway line, it바카라�s a battlefield,바카라� Japanese authorities declare. There are endless bouts of malaria, dysentery, lack of consistent medical attention, despite Dorrigo바카라�s desperate administration. Men turn impossibly gaunt or keep dropping dead like flies.

This is very much the sort of immaculately mounted prestige television, with makers seemingly given free rein, that breaks through fleetingly. As an auteur, Kurzel바카라�s credentials are impeccable, directing each of the five episodes into a rich, internally calibrated whole. Hinds and Elordi gel together effortlessly, the latter particularly excellent at Dorrigo바카라�s tussle between fighting and accepting his privileged position with its helpless remove. Neither is there the slightest sign of war bravado nor glorying fortitude, day in and out. Instead grotesque submission ordered by Japanese colonels, the forest air spiked with terror바카라�these linger with Dorrigo through his life, long after it바카라�s all over.

The Narrow Road to The Deep North echoes through as a psychological confrontation. A man wrestles with ghosts of his past, visions stoked with anguish. Suffering wells up even when he바카라�s near joy. It바카라�s a life riddled with mistakes. Dorrigo isn바카라�t the perfect protagonist whose morality is above questioning. The show doesn바카라�t let him off the hook but also refuses to judge him on his affairs. Ella observes it all, yet sticks by him. It바카라�s a complex marriage where the wife valiantly takes on the work of rehabilitating Dorrigo lifelong, ensuring he has a thriving career once the war ends. She makes it clear to him that she knows what he바카라�s been up to바카라�both Amy, and later, Lynette.

As the show slowly grows, its central appeal knocks hard. At a later point, Dorrigo himself spells it out: 바카라�Our memory is the only true justice, our only defence against repeating the misery of history바카라�. As he publishes one of the dead prisoners바카라� sketches from war, memories are embossed for everyone to witness. Remembrance becomes the most political resistance. If invoked rigorously, it can stem possibilities of our future being even bleaker than past carnage. Though Hinds is formidable, the present-day scenes occasionally teeter to being too sedate. A contemplative, doleful mould, when stretched over five episodes, can be an overkill. Jed Kurzel바카라�s stringing score, hewing several time-frames, gradually comes across as too elaborately designed to evoke maximum melancholy. Harping on the same notes dilutes impact; the show suffers on this count. Neither does the track of Dorrigo바카라�s affair with his colleague바카라�s wife deepen what we already know of his ringing loneliness. It registers only as a distraction from the sheer, grim power in the forest-set scenes. Cinematographer Sam Chiplin captures the forest of Dorrigo바카라�s memory as a chilling zone where survival can be cut off any moment. To live on is to rely on the whims of Japanese major Nakamura (Sho Kasamatsu) and his seniors.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is pitiless and gut-wrenching, going all the way in with showing nerve-shredding brutality on-screen. In certain scenes, Kurzel dares us to keep looking, as the Japanese teach their underlings on how to strike dread into a prisoner바카라�s heart. A sword dangling over a prisoner바카라�s neck, hemmed over several minutes in a moment of mock-play, forms one of the show and the year바카라�s most wrenching scenes.

Ultimately, what was the point of it all? Almost nothing remains of the railways. Thankfully, Kurzel never shies from the more difficult questions, the spells of doubt amidst the Japanese, especially in how Major Nakamura is projected. So much of the torture he learns to exert is inherited, insisted on by higher-ups. Even as he flinches from his harshest command, he바카라�s pushed further into an abyss of mercilessness. In one of the show바카라�s most haunting, focalising moments, when we encounter Nakamura later as a war criminal, he wonders if it바카라�s indeed justice being doled, not vengeance as alleged by his fellow men. In its most emotional heights, The Narrow Road to the Deep North works as a forbidding reminder to hold our memories tight and close, and never forget.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is streaming on SonyLIV.