The Way Back (2010)
Directed by Peter Weir
Written by Peter Weir, Keith Clarke
Starring Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Saorise Ronan, Colin Farrell
Release Date December 29th, 2010
Published December 27th. 2010
Sometimes a movie will place a critic in the odd position of appreciating the artistry and craftsmanship involved and yet leaves the critic almost entirely incapable of recommending the film. Director Peter Weir's The Way Back is a movie that inspires such a feeling. The work here is exceptional but it is exceptional in delivering a cinematic experience that I would not recommend to the average filmgoer trained on mainstream, Hollywood genre films.
The Way Back tells a remarkable true story in a fashion that feels intensely real. In 1942 three men emerged in India, then under the British flag, claiming that they had walked 4000 miles from a Siberian Gulag. The journey, if true, cost the lives of 6 other members of their party and had taken them across the frozen forests of Russia, through the Gobi Desert, and finally over the Himalayas
In 1941 we watch as Janusz (Sturgess) is accused of treason by Russian military authorities who tortured his wife in order to get a confession. Janusz is sentenced to five years in a Siberian Gulag where the harsh conditions hold life expectancy well below Janusz's sentence. The prison is surrounded on all sides by unforgiving frozen wasteland and with few supplies to hoard and fewer places to hoard them; death would seem to be the only possible escape.
The forbidding forest however, doesn't intimidate Janusz who enlists several other inmates in an unlikely escape attempt. Among the prisoners is an American named Mr. Smith (Ed Harris) and a criminal, Valka (Colin Farrell), whose only appeal is that he has a knife that could be handy for hunting and protection. Several other nameless inmates come along but all seem to melt into one behind thick accents.
The names aren't important; it's the remarkable and unlikely journey that is the star of The Way Back. Escaping the gulag turns out to be the easy part. The trouble for these brave journeymen will be surviving the forbidding wasteland and getting out of Communist territories where, if they were caught, they could easily be shipped back to Siberia. This means getting to India, more than 4000 miles away.
The Way Back is based on a book ghost written on behalf of a Polish World War 2 veteran named Slawomir Rawicz. However, Rawicz’s account was found to be false based on documents, some in Rawicz's own hand, which showed he had been released as part of a general amnesty in 1942. Then again, records from Russian prisons amid World War 2 are notoriously unreliable, especially after more than 50 years.
In 2009 another Polish vet named Witold Glinski emerged to say that Rawicz's story was true but also stated that it was his story as he told it to Rawicz. Investigators and historians are still weighing the truth of Glinski's claim. Regardless of truth or fiction though, the story, as captured by director Peter Weir, is a grueling trek filled with death, despair, and triumph in heartbreaking detail.
Jim Sturgess is a terrific star for The Way Back. With his soft face and warm, kind eyes, you can't help but feel for him and root for him. Ed Harris meanwhile is just the right stalwart second in command of this journey, a man so hard you are welcome to wonder if the freezing cold of the forest or the intense heat of the desert could penetrate his cragginess. Colin Farrell then, is on hand to give the film a little life beyond Sturgess's straight arrow hero and Harris's distant toughness. I can imagine many film financiers saying no to The Way Back without someone of Farrell's star power. Even under dirty makeup and crooked teeth Farrell is a charismatic presence.
Director Peter Weir spares no image to demonstrate how difficult this journey was, as if merely describing a 4000 mile trek from Siberia to Tibet, over the Himalayas and ending in India were not enough. There is yeoman work on the part of the cast and the makeup department to demonstrate the physical toll this 11 month journey took on the seven men and one woman, played by Saorise Ronan, who made it.
The Way Back is extraordinarily effective. Watching the film, it is as if you can feel the bone chilling cold, the burn of the sweltering heat, and the emptiness of starvation and dehydration. Peter Weir, not unlike Danny Boyle in 127 Hours, wants to give you some approximation of the physical toll being exacted on his protagonists so those feelings can underline the feeling of triumph at the end of this allegedly true story.
I want to recommend The Way Back because it is so very well made. Peter Weir is a master director who gives this story a visceral, agonizing and yet triumphant feel. But, based on my description is this a movie you want to see? At well over 2 hours The Way Back is an extensive and exhaustive inventory of suffering even with it’s thrilling and cathartic conclusion. The poster for The Way Back could boast the word ‘Grueling’ and count it as a positive.
Film buffs and historians perhaps will be rewarded with a comprehensive, fictional account of what may be the greatest single physical feat that a man has ever undertaken. The truth of Witold Glinski's story remains in question but history buffs may find the details of Weir's telling of this story revealing. Film buffs will surely be impressed with director Peter Weir's masterful direction but beyond the buffs The Way Back is a tough movie and one that I cannot recommend for a general audience.
The feel good ending is great but the journey to get there is agonizing and that’s not really the reason most people go to the movies. Unless you are someone who hears a movie described as ‘Grueling’ and ‘Agonizing’ and gets excited, I would recommend not seeing The Way Back. Perhaps as a primer, read Ronald Downing’s book, ‘The Long Walk, on which The Way Back is based. If you can get through that book and think you want to see that in a movie, then see The Way Back.
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