Why Jacob Elordi, star of Narrow Road to the Deep North, jumped at the chance to work with director Justin Kurzel

When Richard Flanagan won the Booker Prize for the Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2014, his “good mate” Justin Kurzel was in London to celebrate with him. 

So when it came to adapting the acclaimed novel for the screen, Flanagan wanted Kurzel — the award-winning director of Snowtown (2011), The True History of the Kelly Gang (2018) and Nitram (2021) — at the helm.

“He asked me at his shack on Bruny Island — where he actually wrote the book — over lunch,” Kurzel tells ABC Radio National’s The Screen Show.

“He said something beautiful to me, which was, ‘You have to make it your own and … find your own cinematic lens on it, which is going to be different from the book.'”

Based on Flanagan’s father’s experience as a POW, the novel is told in flashbacks as Dorrigo Evans — a famous war hero and celebrated surgeon — recalls episodes from his past: his childhood in rural Tasmania, a torrid love affair in his 20s and his time as a POW on the Thai-Burma Railway in World War II.

Flanagan’s only request to Kurzel was to retain the book’s non-linear structure, a wish the filmmaker and his longtime collaborator, screenwriter Shaun Grant, honoured.

In the screen adaptation — starring Australian actor Jacob Elordi as the young Dorrigo Evans — the action shifts between the early 1940s before Dorrigo is deployed, the POW camp and the 1980s, when he is in his 70s (played by Irish actor Ciarán Hinds).

As a young man, Dorrigo embarks on two love affairs: one with Ella (Olivia de Jonge), who becomes his wife, and another clandestine romance with Amy (Odessa Young), who is married to his uncle, Keith (Simon Baker).

It was the connection between Dorrigo and Amy that drew Kurzel in.

“I was deeply moved by this idea of a phantom love story happening through the war, and how that relationship became a sanctuary for him next to all that trauma,” he says.

“It was material I hadn’t investigated before, but I was deeply moved by how that love story sustained itself throughout his life.”

A leading role for Elordi

When it came to casting, Kurzel felt Elordi possessed the requisite “old-school cinema presence” to play the charismatic Dorrigo Evans.

“There is just something so cinematic about Jacob … There’s something there that the eye is drawn to,” he tells ABC’s 7.30.

“I was hoping I could lure him back to Australia and make this show.”

Elordi — the toast of Hollywood thanks to star turns in recent films Saltburn, Priscilla and Oh, Canada — didn’t take much convincing to come home.

“When Justin Kurzel sends an email, it’s not a question. It’s like, ‘OK, I’ll be there. When do we start?'” Elordi says.

“I watched Snowtown when I was probably 14 or 15, and it was like a cinematic awakening. I realised that is the thing that I want to be a part of, and those are the kinds of movies that I want to make.”

Elordi was drawn to Kurzel’s distinctive directorial style and power as a filmmaker.

“You can’t really describe it, but it’s this raw truth. It’s an undeniable honesty, and it’s the frames that he chooses to hang on … [and] the sensitive hand he has when he cuts his films,” Elordi says.

After working on sets all over Hollywood, Elordi also appreciated the lack of pretension that characterises Kurzel’s filmmaking.

“There’s an ethos on Justin’s set … and it’s everyone working toward a common goal. There’s no hierarchy. It’s just about making art and making things that feel true,” he says.

“In an age of endless content, I think it’s important that we make things that matter.”

The defining moments of a life

In one of their many conversations, Flanagan told Kurzel his theory that there are usually one or two events that land like “meteorites” in a person’s life.

The rest of life, he said, were the ripples these fateful moments created.

“I loved that analogy,” says Kurzel.

In Dorrigo’s case, his affair with Amy and his time as a POW were the defining moments — the “meteorites” — that shaped the rest of his life, and Kurzel sought to imbue these scenes on screen with heightened emotion.

“It was important that there was an energy and spontaneity … [so] you felt as though, as an audience, you were there with them and it’s happening for the first time; it was something very live, and it had an enormous amount of oxygen to it,” he says.

Elordi was new to the work of Richard Flanagan, so he used the 12 months before shooting began to dive into a rabbit hole inspired by Narrow Road to the Deep North.

His research took him from the novel to the work of Japanese poet Basho (from whose poetry the title came) to the war archives.

But once on set, Kurzel asked Elordi to leave his books at the door.

“What you came in the morning to play was your reality … Each day was the truth. There was no life after or before,” Elordi says.

“[The effect] was like a swirling pool of [memories] coming in and out and going back and forth. There wasn’t anything conscious about the filmmaking process.”

This fluid, expansive approach contrasted with the tightly scripted scenes set in the present when Dorrigo and Ella (played by Heather Mitchell) exist in a sort of “mausoleum … thinking about the past,” Kurzel says.

Recreating the Burma railway

The disquieting jungle scenes — set in Thailand but filmed near Sydney — were drawn from Dorrigo’s memories, rather than a rendering of real life.

“There were incredible descriptions by Richard [Flanagan] of this ghoulish world of fire pits around the camps — to keep away the tigers — and the sounds of the animals they would hear,” Kurzel says.

In one pivotal scene, an Australian POW played by Thomas Weatherall (Heartbreak High) is subjected to extreme violence by the prison guards.

“It’s a very important scene in the series,” Kurzel says. “It really is the cornerstone in how the older Dorrigo reflects [on] and also lives his life in the present.”

The director says the traumatic scene required careful preparation.

“You want to get it right, and you want it to be as true as possible in the observation of what happened but, at the same time, you need a set that is incredibly secure and comforting.”

Kurzel, whose grandfather served in WWII, felt a personal connection to the military story told in Narrow Road to the Deep North.

“When I was growing up, it was very much part of our culture and our history. It was just very present,” he says.

But he’s conscious his 19-year-old daughters don’t have the same connection to this history — one of the reasons he wanted to tell Dorrigo’s story.

Narrow Road to the Deep North streams on Amazon Prime from April 18.