| The Way Back | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Peter Weir |
| Produced by | Peter Weir Joni Levin Duncan Henderson Nigel Sinclair Scott Rudin |
| Screenplay by | Peter Weir & Keith Clarke |
| Based on | The Long Walk by Sławomir Rawicz |
| Starring | Jim Sturgess Colin Farrell Ed Harris Saoirse Ronan Mark Strong Dragoş Bucur Gustaf Skarsgård |
| Music by | Burkhard Dallwitz |
| Cinematography | Russel Boyd |
| Editing by | Lee Smith |
| Studio | National Geographic Films Spitfire Pictures Imagenation Abu Dhabi Film Fund Luxembourg |
| Distributed by | Newmarket Films Exclusive Film Distribution Meteor Pictures |
| Release date(s) | September 3, 2010 (Telluride Film Festival) December 29, 2010 (United States) |
| Running time | 133 minutes |
| Language | English, Russian, Polish |
| Budget | $30 Million[1] |
| Box office | $20,348,249[1] |
The Way Back is a 2010 drama film about a group of prisoners who escape from a Siberian Gulag camp during World War II. The film is directed by Peter Weir from a screenplay also by Weir and Keith Clarke, inspired by The Long Walk (1955), a book by Sławomir Rawicz, a Polish POW in the Soviet Gulag. It stars Jim Sturgess as Janusz, Colin Farrell as Valka, Ed Harris as Mr. Smith, and Saoirse Ronan as Irena, with Alexandru Potocean as Tomasz, Sebastian Urzendowsky as Kazik, Gustaf Skarsgård as Voss, Dragoş Bucur as Zoran, and Mark Strong as Khabarov. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Makeup.
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Janusz (Jim Sturgess) is a Polish POW, who is being interrogated by a Soviet officer. Janusz refuses to admit his guilt. His wife, who has been tortured, is brought in to the room and forced to make a statement condemning Janusz. Janusz is sentenced to 20 years in the Gulag.
At the camp in Siberia, Janusz meets Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), an American Metro engineer; an actor named Khabarov (Mark Strong); Valka (Colin Farrell), a hardened Russian criminal; Tomasz, an artist and the group's cook; Kazik, a Pole who suffers from night blindness; Voss, a Latvian priest; and Zoran, a Yugoslav accountant. Khabarov confides to Janusz that he has a plan for escaping. Khabarov's proposed route is south to Mongolia, passing Lake Baikal. Smith tells Janusz that Khabarov is fantasizing about his desire to escape in order to improve his own morale, but Smith is really willing to attempt it.
After being condemned to labor in the mines, Janusz decides to implement the escape plan during a severe snowstorm. Smith, Valka, Zoran, Voss, Tomasz, and Kazik escape with him. On the first night, while looking for firewood, Kazik becomes lost due to his night blindness and eventually freezes to death. He is found by the group next morning and buried; at his grave, Janusz says "A free man died here."
After ten days, the group becomes hopelessly lost and bivouacs in a large cave. Janusz decides to search for the lake by himself, and after three days of trekking across the Siberian steppe, he sees the lake from the top of a cliff and returns to camp, almost dead from exhaustion. When they reach Lake Baikal they come across a Polish girl, Irena (Saoirse Ronan), who tells them she escaped from a collective farm and was originally from a village outside Warsaw where her parents were murdered by Russian soldiers. Smith realizes she is lying, since Warsaw was inside German occupation zone and Russians hadn't reached it, but he forgives Irena. She later tells the group that she came to the Soviet Union with her parents, communist idealists who were arrested as spies.
Eventually the party reaches the Russian-Mongolian border but Valka decides to stay in Russia because, despite his imprisonment, he still sees Russia as his homeland, and Stalin as a hero.
The group carries on but soon finds a great arch over the road with images of Joseph Stalin and a red star, implying that Mongolia is now a Communist state and they will not be safe there. Because of the situation in nearby China they decide that the closest safe place is India and so continue south, across the Gobi desert.
As they cross the desert, the party becomes increasingly dehydrated, but they soon discover a well. They stock up with as much water as they can carry and continue on. Soon a sandstorm strikes and they have to seek protection behind a dune for several hours. As they cross the desert the water runs out and the group begins to grow weak with blisters and sunstroke. Irena repeatedly collapses and eventually dies.
The remaining five continue walking until Tomasz dies and Smith loses the will to live. That evening, while Zoran and Voss continue, Janusz stays behind with the apparently dying Smith. Smith tells Janusz that he cannot overcome the guilt of taking his son to Russia. Janusz explains that he is motivated by the desire to see his wife again so he can forgive her and she can thereby forgive herself, implying Smith should forgive himself too. Smith and Janusz rejoin the others and the next day they find a small stream of water to save them from dehydration.
By now they are in sight of the Himalayas and whilst resting on a rock are found by a Sherpa who guides them to a nearby monastery. They regain their strength but are told by the monks that India cannot be safely reached until spring. Smith decides to continue to Lhasa where there is an American military mission that will enable him to return to the United States, telling the others they've "made it."
Despite the warning of unpredictable snow making the journey difficult, Janusz insists to continue the journey. Soon, they continue over the Himalayas until they reach the Nepalese/Indian border, where they are given a warm welcome by the locals.
The film ends with Janusz reminiscing about returning home to his wife. This is followed by a montage of the Communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and its eventual overthrow. The final scene shows Janusz and his wife reunited in 1989.
Shooting for The Way Back took place in Bulgaria, Morocco, and India.
The film is loosely based on The Long Walk, a book by Sławomir Rawicz, depicting his alleged escape from a Siberian gulag and subsequent 4,000-mile walk to freedom in India. Very popular, it sold over 500,000 copies and is credited with inspiring many explorers. In 2006, the BBC unearthed records (including some written by Rawicz himself) that showed that, rather than having escaped from the Gulag, in fact in 1942, he had been released by the USSR.[2][3] In May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish WWII veteran living in the United Kingdom, came forward to claim that Rawicz's story was true but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz. Glinski's claims also have been seriously questioned.[4][5][6][7] In addition, in 1942, a group of Siberian Gulag escapees is said to have hiked into India.[2] However this too is suspect.[4][8] Though the director Peter Weir continues to claim that the so-called long walk happened, he himself now describes The Way Back as "essentially a fictional film."[2][9][10]
Regardless of whether this particular 'long walk' really took place, during World War II other Poles undertook difficult journeys attempting to leave the Soviet Union. Accounts of their escapes can be found in the archives of the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London, England, and in the Hoover Institute, Stanford University, in California.[11] Also, several relatively verifiable and believable escapee autobiographies have been published in English, e.g., Michael Krupa's Shallow Graves in Siberia.
The Way Back received generally positive reviews. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 75% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 93 reviews, with an average score of 6.8/10. The critical consensus is: "It isn't as emotionally involving as it should be, but this Peter Weir epic offers sweeping ambition and strong performances to go with its grand visual spectacle."[12] Empire awarded the film three out of five stars and said "It’s good, but from this director we have come to expect great."[13] The Guardian awarded it three out of five and said "Weir has put together a good film – oddly, though, considering its scale, it feels like a rather small one."[14] The Telegraph called the film "A journey that feels awful and heroic and unfathomable – and one you’ll want to watch again."[15]
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