The Way Back (2010)

Directed by: Peter Weir | 133 minutes | drama | Actors: Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong, Jim Sturgess, Dejan Angelov, Yordan Bikov, Dragos Bucur, Sattar Dikambayev, Sally Edwards, Valentin Ganev, Igor Gnezdilov, Mariy Grigorov, Meglena Karalambova, Irinei Konstantinov, Ruslan Kupenov, An-Zung Le, Nikolay Mutafchiev, Alexandru Potocean, Stanislav Pishtalov, Stefan Shterev, Gustaf Skarsgård, Anton Trendafilov, Termirkhan Tursingaliev, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Hal Yamanouchi

As a prisoner in a Siberian Soviet labor camp in 1940, you don’t have much choice. You die from hunger, from the cold or from a combination of both. There is not enough food or clothing in the camp to survive the Siberian winter. So for the young Polish Janusz (Jim Sturgess) there is not much else for it: he decides to escape. Conditions in the camp are so appalling that it couldn’t be much worse outside. Finally, with seven men, they escape from the camp into the icy forests of Siberia. The seven men are largely the friends with whom Janusz entered the camp, supplemented by the American Mr. Smith (Ed Harris) and shaggy Russian crook Valka (Colin Farrell). They hadn’t chosen the latter themselves, but that’s how it goes with rough Russians, who just demand that they can come along.

The gentlemen escape during a snow storm so that their tracks are immediately covered. The goal is simple, they have to get as far away as possible and there is only one way: on foot. The journey takes the group first through the freezing cold Siberia and then through the hot Gobi desert, on to Mongolia and China. It’s a battle against extreme elements, first chilling cold and then the all-destroying sun. It’s a journey that won’t get everyone out alive, but eventually they arrive in India. They have covered more than 6400 kilometers on foot. ‘The Way Back’ is based on the book The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz about this bizarre foot journey.

The direction is in the hands of Peter Weir, previously responsible for ‘Witness’ and ‘The Truman Show’. He tells the story with emphasis on the struggle between man and nature, but above all what a person is capable of in a fight for freedom. None of the men is afraid to die on the journey, after all, they die a free man. The political aspect plays a supporting role throughout the film until the end of the film. The director uses historical imagery to support the background of the Second World War. The men may be in India, but they are far from home. A long journey awaits them before they can get home. Not a journey they take on foot, but as a viewer you understand all too well how hard the journey to real freedom must have been.