[size=12pt]The Way Back - 2010 - Peter Weir[/size]
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Well I know I’m wrong, but is not all about football these days, I’m still able to watch something between the mandatory 90 plus 90 minutes of the World Cup Games.
In my watch pile for a while been quite curious to take a look at this work from renowned Aussie director Peter Weir, the story was also quite interesting, so I confess I anxious to take a look at The Way Back.
The film tells the story of a group of prisoners from a Soviet Gulag placed in Siberia that lead by an ex Polish officer manage to escape and walk 6000 km back to India.
The group is very diverse all foreigners or not Russian at least, with one exception a brutal Russian thug that wasn’t a political prisoner (a brilliant Collin Farell), a Lithuanian, a Polish priest, an American engineer trapped in a Gulag because of the great depression, and others mostly Polish, all lead by the Polish officer (played by a very British Jim Sturgess), there’s also a female character (an elegiac Saoirse Ronan) that appears and joins the group after the Gulag escape, giving the group a unique dimension almost like a family. Really like the acting from both big and less big names, Ed Harris is great and Mark Strong very effective in a small but important role Farell is also quite good, don’t about the accents, but it sounded good to me.
It’s a “On the road movie”, but what a road, Siberia the Gobi Desert, and the Himalayas. Some scenes are pretty amazing like the one with the wolfs when they dispute the carcass, and the one where they reach the Soviet border with Mongolia and Valka the Russian thug that escaped the gulag because of debts to the kingpin of the place, and that has a tattoo with Stalin, he’s just not able to cross the border, there are other prisons where no one knows me – he says, very Russian.
It’s a long film more than two hours which is understandable, it’s a lot of ground to cover, still I didn’t find it boring, liked the dialogue and some unique characteristics like the loyalty among the group, and how the female character is treated (like a daughter not a woman).
It also works in favor of the film, the lack of an epic feeling David Lean style, the colors are dark, and the brilliant photography is not a spectacular one but grim and grey, and works perfectly, clearly intentional in my view.
It’s understandable why such a film went off the radar when it was released, some big names a well-known director, but not an obvious story for the masses and not much action.
It’s not a perfect film but I like it, liked the style and the way it was directed, how subtle it was with the character’s avoiding basic characterization and most common places, and with two hours long never gets boring by the contrary.
It also can e considered as anti-communist propaganda, but if you’re dealing with Gulag prisoners and Stalinism, you have to be honest and true to history.
The story is based in a book by the Polish officer named Slavomir Rawicz, so a true story a real account of the events. The book also mentions the spotting of a pair of yeti-like creatures in the Himalayas.
Over the years the events of Rawicz book were put in cause by third parts (mostly other Gulag Polish prisioners), and it he seems he didn’t took part in the real events, he was freed from the Gulag in 1942 in an amnesty, but instead it seems the story is based not in authors experience but the in the account the author heard of three men caught by a Gurka patrol in India, telling the British officer who interrogated him they escaped from a Prisoner Camp in Siberia.
True or not, I do recommend the film, somewhere among National Geographic and an adventures film, and directed with taste.
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