When doctors Dorigo (Jacob Elordi) lick blood from a wound from the inner thigh belonging to Amy (Odessa Young), which is also his uncle’s wife, it is a stag, visceral erotic moment that captures the overall vibes of Justin Kurzelminiseries ”The narrow road to Deep North. “
The extraordinary first two sections of Australian filmmaker Adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s novel 2014 screened at Berlin Film festival, introduced us to Dorigo (played by Elordi during World War II and Ciarán Hinds 1989) and they haunted memories from his business with Amy back in the countryside Adelaide before sent to battle. Director Kurzel has made the male criminal psyche into his signature survey, from last year’s “The order“To 2021 Cannes winner”Nitram“Everything based on real crime events. In “The Smroun Road” he locks into his most sensual, atmospheric and brutally violent study yet, this time being excavated in a decent man who is spiritually injured by war times and an addictive romance.
Director of photography Sam Chiplin and composer Jed Kurzel achieves a fantastic moody vision of the Australian southern coast, or far east of 1943, where Dorigo and his cavalry become Japanese prisoners The railway deep in the jungle. Food, water and humanity are scarce, with Justin Kurzel, which builds terribly beautiful tables of starving male bodies that twist in torps when they are denied even a day’s rest on their task. Elordi lost significant weight to play Dorigo at its lowest. He gives the kind of furious, Brando-Esque performance he has become known for, smartly avoids more comfortable studio roles to seek wavy opportunities that are based only on what has become one of the best rising CVs in town.
Odessa Young, in the meantime, acclaimed for intense turns such as women in erotic frenzy and free fall in films such as “Motharing Sunday” and “Shirley”, felt deep heart feeling in what could have been a pure difficult -learning character. We have only seen the first two episodes, but the actors share a screen -scary chemistry that threatens to overwhelm Dorigo and Amy in probably even more destructive ways in what will come.
When Dorigo and Amy cross roads by chance in a bookstore during the early days of acquaintances, she shares her favorite poem with him, which only consists of three words: “You burn me.” Oh, how prescient these words will be. It is to say that “narrow road” is also burning sexually charged; How unusual for a story about prisoners of war, whose bodies are deteriorated to points that have been far away from everything that can be motivated as erotic.
The first episode opens in a war zone in Syria, 1941, where the adrenaline rush from the battlefield drops its terrible chlorine in Dorigo, Rookie medical officer, who cannot save a little boy or another soldier whose body is blown apart by a landmine. Throughout the premiere, Kurzel and editor Alexandre de Franceschi struck us non-linear anywhere from 1989 Australia to 1943 Thailand, where Dorrigo and his co-armies are packed as a cattle in a train that guard them to the next horrible stop on their war trip.
At the same time, 1940 Melbourne, Dorigo seems very in love with Ella (Olivia Dejonge) and promises his marriage when he returns from war. But it is thrown outside the course of his meetings with Amy, the much younger wife of his uncle Keith (a tanned, grizzled Simon Baker), who is blinding about the sexual energy that radiates between his nephew and husband.
The erotic spark is matched in intensity of the lively images of War Kurzel evokes in the series’ more brutal stretch in the jungle, where Dorigo forms a closeness with other line partners Frank curtains (David Weatherall) and Tiny Middleton (David Howell). Scripture Shaun Grant, who has written several scripts for Kurzel including “nitram” and the similar men-on-battle-charged “true story of the Kelly gang”, takes special caution in the carving of the frequently huge male friendships (think a scattered frat Frat house but with sick, starving men waving their cocks around to pass the time instead of jocks) is formed in the jungle.
Even the Faustian relationship Dorigo seems to be formed with the dangerous, Katani-practicing Colonel Kota (TAKI ABE) means that we will see much more of the Japanese infantry in the upcoming sections. Grant and Kurzel leave no character unclear here in just two short 45-minute sections.
Even for a show directed by a straight guy (Kurzel is married to Essie Davis, who in the 1989 segments plays a colleague’s wife with whom the adult Dorigo has a deal), “narrow road” takes no shame to cap , Chiseled Elordi’s physical beauty, the actor next to the strong-naked in a couple of scenes. In fact, I would say that “narrow path” is more homoerotic than the other way around, never sexualizing the female actors, who are also in line with Kurzel’s attitude to “True History of the Kelly Gang”, where George Mackay and Nicholas Hoult were often either undressed or cross dressing. The director’s interest is always in masculinity, and of course, and should include male sexuality, here to riveting and atmospheric effect.
It is the cooling scenes of cholera and jungle -induced disease that also stays in the mind, with an atmosphere that recalls the grimiest of war film classics. “Smal Road” sometimes emphasizes the carnage, as an extended close -up of Hinds’ Dorrigo that goes villain in surgery on a patient while extracting a tumor from a liver. But the choice can give an exciting contrast to eroticism that is shown: this is a world of blood and viscera, body fluids and containments, and Kurzel will show you everything. And with a brilliant role of actors, you want to continue where this road promises to take you.
Rating: A-
“The Smrart Road to Deep North” premiered at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. Amazon Prime Video will distribute the series in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with Sony Pictures currently seeking an American distributor.
