Cinema Verdict Review: The Way Back

The Way Back

OPENING: 1/21/2011

STUDIO: Exclusive Films

RUN TIME: 133m

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Their escape was just the beginning

Opening Statement
From long time established director Peter Weir comes The Way Back, the story of gulag escapees whose goal is to walk to freedom. While this film isn’t as well constructed as some of Weir’s other works (e.g. Witness, The Truman Show), The Way Back holds it own in the escape-from-jail genre of films. The film could have been tighter and even better written at times, but still manages to entertain to the end.

Facts of the Case
Polish resident Janusz is accused of spying against the communist Soviet Union and Stalin’s regime. After refusing to sign a confession, he is sent to a Soviet labor camp where he is to serve the next twenty years of his life. Janusz quickly learns that no man can survive twenty years in such a camp and immediately befriends other inmates with a plan to escape. During the most furious of winter storms, a group of seven break free and head into the mountains, thus beginning the harrowing 4,000 mile journey from Siberia to India.

The Evidence
Unlike the classic The Great Escape, a film which focuses more on the actual escape from a WWII prison camp, The Way Back, on the other hand, spends little time in the prison and spends the great majority of the film on the journey. The amount of time spent in the camp is simply enough to introduce characters and show the viewers ample reason why the convicted wish to escape. The prisoners sleep several to a bunk, get very little food, and work in the most extreme conditions during a harsh Siberian winter. Those who resist working in the outdoor climates are subject to the mines, which is a hell with dangers of its own. The main character, Janusz, can see quite clearly that life inside the gulag is no life at all. With inmates dying right and left, Janusz must find a way out if he is to survive to see his wife again.

“Nature is your jailer and she is without mercy.”

These words, spoken by the Soviet officer greeting the new inmates, are a verbal warning should they even try to escape, Mother Nature will undoubtedly take each of them down. With literally hundreds of miles of forest in every direction, the survival rate for escapees is zero. Weir does a masterful job of showing the brutality of winter in Siberia. Food is almost nonexistent and every day brings new challenges as the inmates walk in the same direction, hoping to reach some sort of freedom. Weir brilliantly juxtaposes the beauty of the untouched forest against the relentless winter conditions. Overhead camera shots give the forest a feeling of claustrophobia, with trees spaced only feet apart for miles in any direction. The camera might linger over a hill only to see a seemingly endless range of mountains in the distance.

After the survivors reach the southern tip of the Siberian wilderness, the landscape changes considerably and within a relatively short distance they find themselves on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The desert brings new challenges to the remaining group and death quickly becomes the more pleasurable alternative to those whose hope has completely diminished. With countless, enormous sand dunes rivaling that of Tatooine, the escapees walk day after day, night after night, with little to drink and even less to eat. Weir spends half of the film in the desert, and although we better understand this excruciatingly arduous part of the journey for the travelers, I found this to be where the film itself began to drag. At some point, the long distance shots of people walking across the desert became tedious and the film could have benefited from more footage showing the toll that the desert takes on the human body. This is touched on briefly, but more of this would alleviate the need for so many walking shots. During one of these walking shots, a glaring continuity error fills the screen, catching the attention of both my wife and me. Thankfully, the picture eventually reaches its climax and ties itself up rather quickly, almost too quickly, with survivors immediately disappearing from the story simply to focus on Janusz’ original plight.

A few choices in the screenplay could have used better explanation; one scene which struck me as rather sloppy involved the group as they walked along the edge of Baikal Lake. For some unclear reason, the group decides that they must swim across a section of the lake, which is visibly frozen in parts. Weir never established why the group must swim across the near freezing water instead of walking around the lake as they had been doing. In fact, the distance they do maneuver across is quite short, so not going around this section of the lake seems highly illogical on the part of the characters. Another unexplained goal is why the journeymen insist on getting to India, instead of hopping on the Trans-Siberian railroad heading east. Possibly, the railway is too heavily patrolled by invading forces, but that is never explained and with the great distances they have already hiked, hitching a ride on a train, even if for fifty miles, would prove to be quite a relief.

The Way Back is loosely based on The Long Walk, a book by Slawomir Rawicz chronicling his 4,000 mile walk after escaping prison. This story, although selling a half a million copies, has since been debunked on several levels and is questioned as to its truthfulness in storytelling. While stretching the truth has very often provided for great storytelling, that doesn’t excuse Weir from making the film as air-tight as possible.

Closing Statement
In the end, The Way Back is an entertaining film, but not as well constructed as it could have been. The long 132 minute running time becomes quite evident in the second half and with a tighter section in the desert, it might have been more satisfying. Still, Peter Weir has a knack for photographing the beauty in nature’s many landscapes, even when those same landscapes bring death to those who can’t overcome its indifference toward human life.

The Verdict

6/10