Director : Peter Weir
Screenwriters : Peter Weir and Keith R Clarke
Writer : Slavomir Rawicz (novel)
Stars : Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan and Ed Harris
Storyline : Siberian gulag escapees walk 4000 miles overland to freedom in India.
"The Way Back" had its world première at the Telluride Film Festival and is a harrowing epic that will not be an easy sell.
Synopsis : In 1940 a group of prisoners escape from a Siberian labor camp. They travel 4000 miles across the frozen Siberian tundra, the plains of Mongolia, the furnaces of the Gobi Desert and the peaks of the Himalayas to cross the Great Wall of China. The road is long, the encounters risky, the physical conditions appalling physical, and each member of the group has a secrets … (just to add to the tension a little !)
Main Characters
Janusz – Jim Sturgess
As an officer in the Polish cavalry who fought the Nazis, Janusz is one of thousands of Polish soldiers who were trapped when the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland from the east.
Valka – Colin Farrell
Valka is a common criminal, one of the "urkis" who were allowed to control and brutalize political prisoners in the gulags.
Irena – Saoirse Ronan
Irena has a very positive influence on the group. Men confide in her and she learns more about them than they know about each other. Thanks to her tensions are kept in check and this group of such diverse characters becomes a team.
Mr. Smith - Ed Harris
Enigmatic and silent, Mr. Smith came to Russia with his son to work on the Moscow subway. He was arrested one night on no charge and summarily deported to Siberia.
This is no ordinary "jail break" movie – they are like a stroll along a beach compared with this epic 4,000 mile trek across a continent. Escape from Stalin's Siberian labour camps is the remotest of possibilities. New prisoners are aware that they are imprisoned in one of the world's harshest habitats. "Nature is your jailer," they are told.
Temperatures are sub-zero, escaped Gulag prisoners have a bounty on their heads, they are weak due to starvation rations and exhausted after long days of hacking rocks and felling trees. Also, trust among prisoners is a huge issue.
However, two men decide they have nothing to lose. Janusz, who was betrayed by his wife under torture, hooks up with Mr Smith – an American engineer, a communist volunteer and, ironically, a victim of Uncle Joe's "reds under the beds" purges. They take out the camp generator and make their break through the wire. Januzs and Smith are joined by the Russian psycho, Valka and the waif-like Irene. Other prisoners start the trek south through icy forests but soon fall by the wayside.
Tension arises from the internal dynamics of the main group. Smith, the taciturn Yank, Janusz the eternal optimist, Valka the dodgy geezer and the mere presence of the woman Irene all play their part. However, the tension is never elevated enough to make the viewer feel that some sort of breaking point is going to derail the epic. Their journey is an immense achievement which this long film, 132 minutes, does not quite manage to convey. However, Peter Weir does make good use of the time he's given himself to lend insight into the emotional and physical barriers his characters have to overcome.
This is what Weir is the master of – dealing with people who find themselves in surroundings and situations where they do not fit.
There is a plodding (no pun intended, even though the tired characters do plod a lot) midsection of recurring cycles in which the characters walk for a bit, camp for a bit then walk some more as they battle hunger and thirst through deserts, forests and mountains. Having said that, it is solid epic story, set in epic landscapes and filmed on an epic scale. Even though there isn't a great deal of meat to the drama, nor any particular tension the four main actors offer commanding portrayals of characters of limited interest.
That – plus Colin Farrell and Jim Sturgess in one film sold it to me !
Based on the ghost-written novel "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz, it's a stirring testimony to grim determination…even if the story may not be as authentic as Rawicz claimed.
Polish Rawicz (1915 – 2004) was an army officer who was imprisoned by the Soviets. he claimed that he and six others escaped from the Gulag and walked to India in the winter of 1942. However, both Soviet Government and Polish Army records show that Rawicz was released in the Russian amnesty of Poles 1942. He was transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran.
Normally I'd say wait for the DVD for this film – but the epic proportions of the landscapes make going to the cinema worthwhile.