The Way Back

One of the more amusing aspects of going to the movies these days is the seemingly endless series of movie production company logos that start each film. It seems no film can get made without at least three or four companies chipping in, and they all get their logos displayed. This is true with Peter Weir's film The Way Back, and the most pertinent entity involved is National Geographic. In many ways, The Way Back is a travelogue thinly disguised as a movie.

The film, which comes with the dreaded tag "Based on True Events," is adapted from a book called The Long Walk, which many people believe was not true. The story concerns a group of escapees from a Soviet gulag during World War II, who walk from Siberia to India for their freedom. The whole notion seems incredible, so finding out it might not be true kind of undercuts the whole thing.

Jim Sturgess stars as a young Polish man who is sentenced to 20 years on trumped up spying charges. He falls in with a group of men, including an inscrutable American who is only known as "Mr. Smith," (Ed Harris) and a career criminal (Colin Farrell). The scenes in the prison are kind of interesting, as the political prisoners steer cleer of the criminals, who run the place. The barter that goes on is imaginative. One man, an artist, trades drawings of naked women for food. Farrell is a cold-hearted killer who murders a man for his sweater.

The escape happens fairly early in the movie. Seven men start out, and we know, because of an ill-conceived title card at the beginning of the film, that not all will make it. Some of the cliches of war prison movies exist. One character is close to blind, which reminded me of Donald Pleasance in The Great Escape.

Eventually they are joined by a teenage girl on the run (Saorsie Ronan), who gives the plot a jump start (she gets the men to open up about their pasts), but her existence seems to be the result of a studio meeting--"Hey, shouldn't we get a pretty girl in there somehow?"

The National Geographic stuff comes through on their travels, which start in the Siberian forests and then into the Gobi desert of Mongolia and finally the Himalayas (the movie was filmed in Bulgaria, Morocco, Pakistan, and India). Some of these scenes are quite striking, such as when they look out upon the desert and realize they've got a long way to go. But other scenes seem kind of pat, such as knowing they are in China when they come to the Great Wall. They find a hole in it (so much for the Great Wall), and seem to cross China into Tibet without incident.

As a director, Weir seems to be relying on the triumph of the human spirit thing rather than dramaturgy. "Look at these men--weren't they admirable?" the film seems to ask, frame after frame. Instead of that, the script might have done better to flesh out the supporting characters. As I read the Wikipedia summary, I see that one of the men was a Latvian priest, which I missed entirely. Sturgess, Harris, and Farrell get fleshed out, with Harris being the most interesting character (and given life by a typically strong Harris performance), but the others are given short shrift.

The Way Back got one Oscar nomination, for Best Makeup, which was deserved. Not only are the travelers faces made up to reflect the ravages of their jury, but so are their feet, bloodied and swollen. Aside from that, a fine performance by Ed Harris, and some stunning scenery, this film doesn't really have a lot to offer.

My grade for The Way Back: C-.