An adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s acclaimed novel of the same name, the Australian drama series The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a chronicle of the human condition—of its best and worst potential, the overpowering control of fate over human life, and also of choices and consequences. The significance of the title, inspired by Edo period Japanese poet Matsuo Basho’s poetic travelogue, Oku no Hosomichi, which refers to the trials and tribulations of life’s journey, is accentuated through the novel/series’ meditation on the themes of passion, sacrifice, horrors of war, loss, and acceptance. The five-episode miniseries revolves around the experiences of surgeon/prisoner of war Dorrigo Evans. Different stages of his life come into focus, shaping the identity of the man himself.
Spoilers Ahead
Dorigo and Amy’s Passionate Romance
Three distinct phases of Dorrigo’s life are highlighted in the series, the first one—during the early 40s, a year or so before a young medical student, Dorrigo Evans, is sent to serve in the Australian army in the Second World War. Dorrigo has a promising career and is committed to his girlfriend, Ella, who comes from a background of wealth and prestige—her grandfather wrote the constitution of the nation. A poet at heart, Dorrigo feels like a fish out of water in the presence of Ella’s aristocratic family and can’t help but feel he is playing the role of a pawn as more than his assessment as an individual. Ella’s family judges his worth over his prospective career as someone who will bring pride by fighting for the nation.
Dorrigo visits his uncle Keith in Adelaide to spend a few days, where he meets his young wife, Amy Mulvaney—and the duo hit it off rather quickly. Initially, Dorrigo tries to maintain his distance, as moral and ethical scruples keep him from acting on his instincts. Also, fear of exposure, given the forbidden nature of their relationship, hinders Dorrigo from getting drawn to Amy—even though both of them feel most honest and free in the presence of each other. Amy shares her disappointment when Dorrigo continues to suppress his feelings towards her, and eventually, their sense of right and wrong is overwhelmed by the surge of passion that they can no longer control. Amy and Dorrigo cheat on their loved ones and start dreaming of a future together after Amy shares her wish to be a mother to Dorrigo’s child, when reality serves a rude awakening. It’s time for Dorrigo to join the army and head to the Eastern front, and Amy is left devastated at his departure. Keith, despite remaining busy in his business and whatnot, had his suspicions about Amy’s illicit affair, which get confirmed when, during a visit to their friend’s place, Amy defends cheating as a form of love. While returning, Keith confronts his wife about his suspicions, but Amy lies straight to his face, knowing full well Keith isn’t gullible enough to be fooled by her words. However, it seems that Keith is unbothered about the truth anyway, now that Dorrigo is out of their lives.
The Horrors of the Siam-Burma Death Railway
The next phase of Dorrigo’s life throws him to the depths of hell, as the troop of the Australian army led by him gets captured by the Imperial Army of Japan following the defeat of the Allied forces in the Battle of Java. At this point, Japan, posing itself as the savior of its neighboring Asian countries from European colonialism, had already started its aggressive expansion. Korea and part of China were under Japanese control, and now they wanted to invade British-occupied India as well, and in order to do that, the Siam-Burma railway project was to play a crucial role. The Australian POWs are brought to the treacherous wilderness of Thailand to be forced to make the railway a reality by carving a path through the jungle, and Dorrigo finds himself in a tough spot as he is entrusted by Major Nakamura to take charge of his troops. Which basically implies bearing witness to his comrades being subjected to vicious tortures by the Japanese, remaining underfed, overworked, and afflicted by sickness of a dozen kinds—and keep them prepared that they never miss a single day. Nakamura still had some humanity left in him and respected Dorrigo, but his superior, Fukuhara, totally driven by jingoistic propaganda, forced him to adopt harrowing, brutal means while dealing with the POWs—sugar-coating the ordeal as a noble, honorable service to their nation. The minds and spirits of the POWs are shattered, as their inhumane treatment at the hands of the Japanese soldiers renders them shells of the human beings they once were. Fukuhara tries to indoctrinate Major Nakamura in his ultraviolent ideals, as he executes an extremely sick and near-death Australian soldier, Tiny Middleton, in front of his comrades.
Dorrigo tries his best to aid his comrades, but finds his spirits dwindling as the death toll rises. The anorexic, malnourished, skeletal soldiers have lost every semblance of hope they might have left within them. Private Hendricks, one of the soldiers in Dorrigo’s troop, had incredible artistic talents and captured the nightmares he experienced as a POW working to make the Death Railway a reality in his sketchbook. Hendricks shared a strong rapport with Dorrigo and spent his agonizing last moments in his presence. Dorrigo tries to make Nakamura see reason and at least provide some medication, necessary supplies, and some rest to the sick and frail soldiers so that they remain in working condition. However, Nakamura has been brainwashed by Fukuhara’s dark ideals and believes that this is the price the White colonizers must pay to make up for their sins—as they treated their colonized subjects the same way, implying that the atrocities they perpetrate are justified, as they are done in retaliation for similar sordid acts. Nakamura is already under pressure from his higher-ups and genuinely believes that the work done by the POWs will be remembered with honor in generations to come.
The appalling mistreatment endured by the POWs robs them of their fellowship, as in one instance, a couple of prisoners deliberately skip their routine toiling, and the brunt of their ‘misdeed’ has to be taken by their acting leader, an extremely sick Private Frank Gardiner. Nakamura forces Goanna, aka Choi Sang-min, a Korean soldier who is forced to serve the Japanese Imperial Army, to beat Gardiner to a bloody pulp—while the major ignores Dorrigo’s desperate pleas for them to spare Gardiner’s life. Even with Gardiner begging for help, the soldiers who skipped their duties that day never speak up or acknowledge their role, in fear of suffering brutality at the hands of Nakamura’s forces, and in the process allow Gardiner to be beaten for hours and ultimately let him succumb to his death. Dorrigo had probably thought that the situation could not get any worse than this, but within a couple of days, he receives a letter from his homeland, from which he learns that Keith and Amy had perished in a massive explosion at their hotel. Amy, not Ella, was the one whose memories kept Dorrigo alive in this hellhole, enduring every horror humanity has to offer. But with her gone, Dorrigo no longer remained the same person—turning merely into a hollow shell who acts and reacts to situations and nothing else.
The final blow to Dorrigo’s morale came when he received the instruction from Nakamura that he had to choose a hundred men from his troop who would have to walk to the far-flung Three Pagodas Pass to aid the Japanese army. At this stage, Japan was facing heavy losses in the late phase of the Second World War, and a shortage of manpower prompted Fukuhara to coerce Nakamura into sending POWs to aid the war effort. Nakamura, knowing full well that, in their present condition, the prisoners will not survive the journey, had to instruct Dorrigo to send his men to their death. Dorrigo’s protests go in vain as he gets roughed up by Nakamura and eventually has to choose his own life over that of his comrades.
Did the realization finally dawn upon Fukuhara?
The Death Railway finally gets completed, but it was way too late to make any real difference with additional communication links, as Japan faces ultimate loss by the end of the Second World War, following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Following the conclusion of the war, Japanese army generals are tried for their war crimes; Choi Sang-min is hanged to death for murdering Frank Gardiner. Nakamura, back in a war-ravaged Japan, having lost his family, sees the truth—that they weren’t on the right side of history, being hunted in their own country for the abysmal violations of human rights. Nakamura manages to find out about Fukuhara, who is spending his days in hiding, but he is still deluded enough to think that the world is wrong to judge them for what they did during wartime. He still makes excuses by mentioning Western aggression and their vengeful mentality, manifesting in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, though tragic and vicious acts of inhumanity, cannot be used by someone like Fukuhara to play victim, not after he dehumanized the POWs to an unthinkable state. Nakamura expresses his wavering faith in imperial propaganda, as he questions his former superior whether their actions brought upon such terrible consequences—and no amount of excuses or justification provided by Fukuhara can ever wipe that sense of guilt from Nakamura’s mind. The futility of their mindless brutalities strike hard, knowing the sacrifices went in vain as much of the infamous Burma railroads was abandoned in later years.
Was Dorrigo Able to Find Amy?
Dorrigo returns to Australia and gets married to Ella, who could sense that a piece of her lover went missing on the war front. Ella was also able to learn about the clandestine affair Dorrigo had with his aunt but never confronted him about it. Dorrigo shares his frustration with Ella as her father tries to flaunt his war hero son-in-law to boost up that aristocratic ego in front of socialites. Dorrigo has seen the true face of war and knows glory and heroism, which Ella’s father wants to cling to like the rest of the world, are merely the fanciful sugarcoating needed to hide the grotesque reality. Ella asks Dorrigo to suck it up, as her father’s fortune will provide them a secure future anyway, and Dorrigo, who has already surrendered himself to the whims of life since Amy’s demise, accepts. Dorrigo visits Hendricks’ widow to hand her his sketchbook and honors Gardiner’s memories by releasing aquarium fishes into the ocean—Dorrigo acknowledges that no one deserves to meet their end in captivity, the ideal Gardiner shared with him before meeting his harrowing end.
The narrative shifts to the 1980s, the present timeline of the series. Reaching his sixties, Dorrigo Evans has made a name for himself as a reputed surgeon and is a public face as a decorated war hero. Dorrigo and Ella’s marriage is founded upon conveniences. She knows that she lost her husband a long time ago, first to a woman she never met and then to a war she never experienced. Their happy married life is merely a façade they keep up to uphold the image Dorrigo has built for himself. Ella knows that Dorrigo’s promiscuous tendencies never really left him, and that at present he is having an affair with his colleague’s wife, Lynette Maison. But aside from a mild confrontation, Ella doesn’t react too much.
Trauma and survivor’s guilt from the war years have resulted in Dorrigo developing an arrogant, cynical, and emotionally detached demeanor, which affects his affair as well, as Lynette eventually distances herself. Dorrigo operates on a cancer patient, and his proficiency and risk-taking attitude, also a result of his army days, prompt him to perform a daring surgery on her. Lynette’s husband, Rick, who held a grudge against Dorrigo for having an affair with his wife, decides to get back at him by reporting this incident to the medical council, and Dorrigo undergoes a malpractice investigation. However, he doesn’t have an iota of guilt and refuses to acknowledge the nature of his actions, as he continues to lock horns with the council personnel. War imbued him with a darkness from which Dorrigo can’t escape at this age.
In a press meet before the publication of his memoir, Dorrigo faces uncomfortable questions from a journalist, who asks him about the lack of morality and ethics of the Allied Forces in light of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Dorrigo lashes out, as he feels cozied in the security and comfort of ignorance, the world will never be prepared to face the reality of the true depths of human depravity that war showcases. Dorrigo receives a published artbook of Hendricks’s sketches and knows no matter how much the world appreciates it for its artistic value, the sketches hardly capture the horrors the POWs had to endure. As the past catches up with him, Dorrigo reminisces about his memories with Amy, as if a life unlived has passed him by. Dorrigo is approached by a team of Japanese delegates, who offer him a copy of Matsuo Basho’s “Oku no Hosomichi,” aka “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” and a book of Japanese Death Poems. Dorrigo is reminded how Fukuhara hummed a melodic tune while taking Tiny Middleton’s head off as he, in his delirious state, prayed for one last time—and perhaps that was his introduction to the genre of death poems.
The harrowing expression of Dorrigo’s trauma and guilt is shown during his memoir launch event. Like a clockwork toy, Dorrigo utters what he is supposed to say and hallucinates the skeletal POWs who perished in the jungles of Burma, watching him expressionless, with hollow gazes—as if mocking him for living a luxurious life and still being unable to attain peace of mind.
After the end of the event, Ella shares a troubling truth with her husband: apparently Amy had come looking for him at a time when Ella and Dorrigo were living as a married couple with their children. Amy left without informing Dorrigo, and for so long, Ella had kept it a secret. Dorrigo is shaken by the revelation and realizes how his wife must have felt as he led a secret, detached life of his own.
It remains uncertain how much of Dorrigo’s memories in this sequence are real or just figments of his wishful imagination, but Dorrigo remembers coming across Amy after returning to his homeland, and she was seen with her child—possibly Dorrigo was the father, like she wished. However, they were separated amidst a huddling crowd, and that was the last time Dorrigo had seen her. At present, the shocking revelation shared by Ella opens the floodgates of Dorrigo’s memories, as regrets of not having the chance to live a different, happy life get to him—and in his anguished state of mind, he meets a road accident while driving back home. In his final moments, Dorrigo sees his past and present self, also of his fond memories shared with Amy. But it’s too late to imagine what could have been—as he breathes his last at the end.
