The Australian series starring Jacob Elordi who edits 'The Bridge on the River Kwai'

Now largely and unfairly forgotten, David Lean became one of the world's most popular and prestigious filmmakers with The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a major production about a British prisoner of war camp under Japanese control during World War II in which soldiers are forced to build the railway bridge of the title, a route between Burma and Thailand to the greater glory of Japanese imperialism. From the best-seller A namesake of Pierre Boulle, Lean turned the film into a portrait of the delirium of war through the confrontation between the representatives of two empires in crisis: the British military man who forces his men to build the bridge for the enemy out of pure megalomaniacal discipline, and the Japanese who exert strict control over the prisoners. The narrow road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan, published in 2013, has often been seen as Australia's response to Boulle's book and Lean's film. The author drew on both his father's experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war and those of a renowned Australian doctor who endured the same hardships in the construction of that famous railway, to craft a drama of love and war that has now been turned into a miniseries. The protagonist, Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi) is a surgeon engaged to a girl from a good family. When he is about to be called up, he falls in love and becomes involved with his uncle's young wife, a relationship that will mark him for life. The modernity ofThe Bridge on the River Kwai It was based on creating a war film without heroes or a possible happy ending. The narrow path It also questions the immutability of the hero figure, based on the evolution of Evans, who as an adult becomes a renowned doctor, but also cynical and incapable of love.

Flanagan corrects one of the defects that were most criticized in The Bridge on the River Kwai: not to present the behavior of the Japanese army in all its sadism. The five-episode miniseries already makes this clear in the second episode, in a chilling scene that is not explicitly shown. The series' director, Justin Kurzel, has amassed a filmography especially interested in violence, with titles such as Snowtown, Macbeth either NitramIn a production with a clear classical feel like this one, some scenes include torture of unbearable cruelty, even though it filters through the jungle mists. But Kurzel is more in tune with the poetics of Terrence Malick's The thin red line than in the naturalistic harshness common in many of his films.

The inhumanity of the prisoners' living conditions helps explain Dorrigo's internal process and his progressive hardening as a person. Although the idea of the series is to understand the complexity of the character through the three periods in which he is inscribed: that of his luminous and warm passion for his uncle's wife, that of the war, and that of the present, The narrow path It works primarily because of the strength of the war segment, which invokes deep emotions by reflecting how the Australian prisoners, especially the protagonist, maintain their dignity and camaraderie in the worst of conditions. Jacob Elordi, who made his name as a toxic all-American teenager in the series Euphoria, here he transforms into an actor with the contours of a classic star. As handsome and elegant as a young Gary Cooper, but with a hint of torment.