The Way Back (2011)

I love this movie so much

Pretty Good

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

First of all, I just want to point out that this movie was extremely inspiring and one of the most inspiring movies I have ever seen. The fact that the need to get out of the Siberian Labor Camp, where the group of men were put, made them go on a voyage to India, which in my opinion was a death wish. The brutal weather conditions, the exhaustion, the constant walking, the tiredness, and the weight they had to carry to ensure they had necessary things to remain alive all played a role in the death wish they embarked on. These group of men were on a mission and their freedom and break away from communism was super important that they had to get as far away as possible, except for the one guy that decided to stay since he has been a communist all his life. Before being set upon their journey, the conditions at the Siberian Labor Camp were pretty accurate, in terms of how it seemed like it was every man for them self and the men there would trade their food rations or other items for clothing in order to keep warm, given the weather conditions. The shaving of heads was also another accurate portrayal that, believe it or not, was present in many other camps as well such as the Gulag and Nazi Concentration Camps. Overall, this movie was by far the best movie we have seen because it just goes to demonstrate the lengths that people are wiling to uptake just to get out of a camp and how much people really cared for the lives that they wanted to have.

"The Way Back" is certainly a wonderfully shot film, with beautiful landscapes and does a great job capturing the daunting terrain. The men who escaped from the Soviet Gulag in Siberia certainly had a journey cut out for them. With that being said, there were certain positives and negatives about the film. One, it had a sound portrayal of Gulag life. From the very beginning you see how quickly time in the camp is turned to savagery. Rations are hoarded or traded or stolen. All that matters is survival, rather, your own survival. There is certainly a camp hierarchy in place with the "criminals" calling the shots. This was a useful tactic that the guards employed in order to create fear and order within the barracks. The hard labor of the camps was also depicted well in the film. The labor of the Gulag was an imperative aspect that came with many dangers for the men. Any one caught not doing their job would be shot. We see close moments such as these in the film, especially when Jim Sturgess' has a moment of hallucination and tries to walk out of the mine. Life was grueling and difficult, with few moments of hope. "Mister Smith," Ed Harris' character sums it up well later in the film: "In the camps some saw death as freedom." Despite some of these positive aspects, the overall journey left me in disbelief. The whole thing was like the ten biblical plagues. One thing after another, I was surprised they weren't all dead sooner. That being said, there are questions about the veracity of the story itself as even though the film is supposed to be based on a true story, the 1956 memoir that it is based upon is heavily disputed. Yet the purpose of the journey was not entirely lost on the film. For one it gave us a reflection of Soviet life that we didn't see in the Soviet Union through the scene with the destroyed Buddhist monastery. This was a reflection of what life would have been like in Soviet Russia as the monastery was completely destroyed and desolate. Churches were demolished and priests were shot and taken to camps. Under the communist regime religion was banned, yet another aspect people found solace in taken away. Overall the film showcased an immense amount of strength on the part of the escapees and the struggles of maintaining hope. An interesting story whether fact or fiction.

I saw this movie some years ago, or more accurately I saw half this movie some years ago. Maybe I was having a bad day but at the time I just couldn't summon the enthusiasm to see it through. So when I saw it advertised recently to appear on television I thought I would give it another shot. This time round I made it as far as Mongolia, which I suppose is progress. That I got this far is probably because this time around I noticed that it was directed by Peter Weir and because I am a big fan of Gallipoli I gave it more leeway and time for development. Alas my patience and respect for Peter Weir were not rewarded on this occasion. There is something very fundamentally wrong with this movie, or perhaps the story itself does not lend itself to audience engagement, at least on the big screen. Peter Weir's genius in Gallipoli was to make a "war" film (or actually an "anti-war" film) by showing practically nothing of war. 80% of that movie was about building up the characters and the relationship between them, and because we know them so well we actually care about what happens at the end. In "The Way Back" Peter Weir seems to have forgotten about the need for audience identification with characters. Perhaps I missed a few things with the bas russian accents and names that do not register after hearing them once but quite frankly I had no idea who those people traipsing around Siberia were and even less idea why I should care. I think (but I am not sure) that there is one key protagonist (the one we see being interrogated at the beginning) and a bunch of other guys, but that is hard to tell because they all look and sound the same. If that were not bad enough these strangers do stuff that anyone would do in that situation and they do it for a long time against a backdrop that looks basically the same. I had no idea where they were going and no idea of the distances involved or the absolute immensity of the landscape, be it Siberia or Mongolia. A map and some aerial shots would have helped enormously for as it is it looks like they are off for a weekend tramp. We have absolutely no concept of the magnitude of their feat, which I would have thought is the whole point of the film.Our heroes, whoever they are, are so clueless that they have to batter a watch with some genius who tells them they must turn off the generator and cut the wires to escape. Bravo, that is certainly a plan and a half. How they disabled the generator, or cut the wires, we are not shown, nor are we shown how they escape dozens of guards and dogs in hot pursuit. And yes, we have a BLIND man thrown in for good measure, that's right, not just a BLIND man but one who indulges in syrupy flashbacks. And then, blow me down, if our intrepid team don't meet a pretty young girl partway along and for reasons best known to themselves they skip across some ice together. It is all very lazy, uninspired and unbelievable stuff.Eventually our band of heroes gets to the Mongolian border and comes across a huge archway in the middle of nowhere...ah...what? They are surprised to learn that China is also a communist country, which in 1941 was not actually true.Annoyingly, despite starting the movie with people speaking their actual languages and having English subtitles, as soon as we get to the Gulag everyone amazingly speaks heavily accented English. Perhaps this approach would have cut the mustard 30 years ago when all Hollywood Germans spoke like Colonel Klink, but in this day and age portraying foreign language by using badly accented English is just plain embarrassing to all involved. Quite apart from the embarrassment these rotten accents made it difficult to understand what anyone was saying, and because one actor's poor impression of a Russian speaking English sounds much like another's poor impression of a Russian speaking English, it only made trying to figure out who was who even worse.OK, this is not the worst movie in the World and indeed I see that many people think this movie is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm glad others enjoyed it, but for me it was an emotionless and heartless experience, which ultimately I had to terminate because I found the boredom of real life more interesting.

Great scenery, but that's about it, too many goofs and holes, not to mention that 'history' is merely a set of events that are agreed upon! Lots of time spent with the group walking through a desert, living off a berry, a snake, and a muddy puddle, that they somehow manage to fill their bags and bottles, full of water?? A well, filled to the top with clean looking water, in the middle of a desert??? how? why? who put the water there? A sandstorm that knocks everyone to the ground for an hour or so, yet they still have buckets of water that they were carrying? One scene, one guy kills a snake, whilst the other 4 are lying in the sand, dying, the next scene, they have somehow built a large rock shelter, using near perfectly formed bricks, they have built a fie and a brick BBQ, and said snake is now simmering on it, like chicken?? Come on! The final stages are comical, they somehow reach Tibet, the 4 remaining, dying guys, including Ed Harris, who must be 134 years old, they wake to find one of their party is missing, the two younger guys go look for him, and see him climbing a mountain top, just disappearing out of sight (the Himalayas, no, really!) So they run after him, the next shot they have caught up, and have fully scaled the Himalayas, in the rags they were wearing, in their near death state! Come on! Its the small details that count!