The Way Back (2010 film)

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The Way Back
Exclusive Film Distribution

Meteor Pictures
Release dates
  • September 3, 2010 (2010-09-03) (Telluride Film Festival)
  • December 29, 2010 (2010-12-29) (United States)
Running time
133 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguagesEnglish
Russian
Budget$30 million[1]
Box office$24.1 million[1]

The Way Back is a 2010 American survival film directed by Peter Weir, from a screenplay by Weir and Keith Clarke. The film is inspired by The Long Walk (1956), the memoir by former Polish prisoner of war Sławomir Rawicz, who claimed to have escaped from a Soviet Gulag and walked 4,000 miles (6,400 km) to freedom in World War II. The film stars Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, and Saoirse Ronan, with Alexandru Potocean, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Gustaf Skarsgård, Dragoș Bucur and Mark Strong.

The film was nominated for an

The Wolfman. The nomination was received by Gregory Funk, Edouard F. Henriques and Yolanda Toussieng.[2]

Plot

During World War II, after the Soviet invasion of Poland, young Polish army officer Janusz Wieszczek is held as a prisoner and interrogated by the NKVD. The Soviets, unable to get him to admit that he is a spy, take his wife into custody as well and severely torture her; from her they extort a statement condemning him. He is sentenced to 20 years in a Gulag labour camp deep in Siberia.

There he meets those with whom he later plans an escape: Mr. Smith, an American engineer; Khabarov, an actor; Valka, a hardened Russian criminal; Tomasz, a Polish artist; Voss, a

night blindness; and Zoran, a Yugoslav accountant. Khabarov secretly tells Janusz that he is planning to escape south to Mongolia, passing Lake Baikal
. Smith cautions Janusz that it is Khabarov's way to discuss escape plans with newcomers, to maintain his morale, but nothing will come of it. At times Janusz seems to hallucinate the front door of a country home and adjoining window ledge, which holds plants and a rock he attempts to reach for. Janusz follows through with the escape with Smith, Valka, Voss, Tomasz, Zoran and Kazik during a severe snowstorm that covers their tracks.

Kazik freezes to death the second night of the trek, after losing his way back to the campsite while looking for wood, and the group buries him. After many days of travelling across the snows of Siberia, the group reaches

collective farm near Warsaw, where they treated her cruelly, so she escaped. Smith realises the inaccuracies in her story, as Warsaw is occupied by the Germans
; nevertheless, despite his misgivings that she'll slow them down and tax their meager food supply, he agrees with the group to let her in. Smith eventually cautions her about the lie and says he will not tolerate any more, in response to which she admits that her parents were communists but the communist rulers killed them anyway and sent her to an orphanage.

When the group reaches an unpatrolled border between the Soviet Union and Mongolia, Valka, who idolizes

Great Wall
.

As they reach the Himalayas, all of them on the verge of death, they are rescued by a Tibetan monk who takes them to a Buddhist monastery where they regain their strength. Smith decides to go to Lhasa with the help of one of the monk's contacts, who will smuggle him out through China. Once there, he anticipates he will be able to connect with the US military, his return to America ensured. The remaining three continue to trek through the Himalayas and soon reach India and get assistance from villagers. The Indian government helps them reach their home peacefully.

At the end of the film, Janusz keeps walking around the world until 1989, when the communist regime in Poland is ousted from power. The final scene of the film shows Janusz, 50 years after being taken captive, again envisioning the door and reaching for the rock; this time he takes a key hidden beneath the rock to open the door and reconcile with his wife.

Cast

  • Jim Sturgess as Janusz Wieszczek, a young Polish inmate made a prisoner of war during the Soviet invasion of Poland
  • Ed Harris as Mr. Smith, an American inmate and former engineer
  • Saoirse Ronan as Irena Zielińska, an orphaned teenage Polish girl trying to escape from the Soviet Union, who meets up with the fugitives near Lake Baikal
  • Colin Farrell as Valka, a tough Russian inmate and gambler whose most prized possession is a knife he calls "Wolf"
  • Dragoș Bucur as Zoran, a Yugoslavian inmate who used to be an accountant and is considered a funny man
  • Alexandru Potocean as Tomasz Horodinsky, a Polish inmate and former pastry chef who dreams of becoming an artist
  • Gustaf Skarsgård as Andrejs Voss, a Latvian inmate and former priest
  • Sebastian Urzendowsky as Kazik, a young Polish inmate suffering from night blindness
  • Mark Strong as Andrei Timofeyevich Khabarov, a Russian inmate and actor who was imprisoned when the play he was in was deemed subversive by Soviet authorities

Production

Background

The film is loosely based on The Long Walk (1956),

USSR in 1942.[3][4] Nevertheless, there is some circumstantial evidence that some sort of trek to freedom occurred, via the route outlined in the book and film. Captain Rupert Mayne, a British intelligence officer in Calcutta in 1942, interviewed three emaciated men, who claimed to have escaped from Siberia. Mayne always believed their story was the same as that of The Long Walk. So the possibility remains that someone – even if not Rawicz – achieved this extraordinary feat.[5] 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".[3][6][7]

Laurence Harvey and Herbert Wilcox announced plans to make a film from The Long Walk in 1957.[8]

Filming

Principal photography took place in Bulgaria, Morocco and India.[9]

Reception

The Way Back received generally positive reviews. Review aggregator

Empire awarded the film three out of five stars and wrote, "It's good, but from this director we have come to expect great."[12] The Guardian awarded it three out of five and wrote, "Weir has put together a good film – oddly, though, considering its scale, it feels like a rather small one."[13] The Telegraph called the film "A journey that feels awful and heroic and unfathomable – and one you'll want to watch again."[14]

Music

The soundtrack to The Way Back was released on January 18, 2011.[15]

No.TitleArtistLength
1."Interrogation"Burkhard Dallwitz3:36
2."New Arrivals"Burkhard Dallwitz1:16
3."Plans for Escape"Burkhard Dallwitz1:58
4."A Brave Man"Burkhard Dallwitz1:00
5."Escape"Burkhard Dallwitz2:48
6."Lake Baikal"Burkhard Dallwitz3:35
7."Freedom?"Burkhard Dallwitz3:02
8."Mirages Don't Have Birds"Burkhard Dallwitz2:34
9."The Abandoned Temple"Burkhard Dallwitz1:17
10."Water!"Burkhard Dallwitz3:36
11."Tibet"Burkhard Dallwitz5:26
12."India"Burkhard Dallwitz1:58
13."Keep on Walking"Burkhard Dallwitz2:42
14."Closing Credits"Burkhard Dallwitz7:39
Total length:42:27

See also

  • The Desperate Ones, 1967 film about a gulag escape by two Polish brothers
  • As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me, 2001 film about a German World War II prisoner of war escaping from a Siberian Gulag to the Iranian border
  • Gulag
    , 1985 film depicting a gulag escape and arduous journey to freedom

References

  1. ^ a b "The Way Back (2011)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2012-02-27.
  2. ^ "The 83rd Academy Awards (2011) Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved March 18, 2022.
  3. ^ a b "How The Long Walk became The Way Back". BBC. Retrieved 2010-12-05.
  4. ^ Levinson, Hugh (2006-10-30). "Walking the Talk?". BBC. Retrieved 7 August 2011.
  5. ^ "Walking the talk?". 30 October 2006 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
  6. YouTube
    Retrieved 2011-02-19.
  7. YouTube
    Retrieved 2011-02-19.
  8. ^ Schallert, Edwin (July 15, 1957). "Harvey Will Produce 'Long Walk;' Hayden Top Star in 'Hard as Nails'". Los Angeles Times. p. C9.
  9. ^ "The Way Back (2010): Filming & Production". IMDb.
  10. Fandango
    . Retrieved 2020-01-23.
  11. ^ "The Way Back Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  12. ^ "Empire's The Way Back Movie Review". Empireonline.com. Retrieved 2012-02-27.
  13. ^ Bradshaw, Peter (2010-12-24). "The Way Back – review". The Guardian. London.
  14. ^ Sandhu, Sukhdev (2010-12-23). "The Way Back, review". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  15. ^ "The Way Back Soundtrack". TheOST. 2010. Retrieved January 6, 2014.

Further reading

  • Willis, Linda (2010). Looking for Mr. Smith: The Quest for the Truth Behind The Long Walk, the Greatest Survival Story Ever Told. Skyhorse Publishing.
  • Strandberg, Mikael; et al. (5 January 2011). "The Long Walk Articles". This is an excellent collection of articles relating to the movie The Way Back, the book upon which it was based The Long Walk, Linda Willis' Looking For Mr. Smith, and related materials.
  • StRIX (Peter Fleming) (12 July 1956). "The Long Bow". The Spectator. p. 13. An interesting contemporary discussion of Rawicz's book by a noted explorer.
  • Shalamov, Varlam (1980). Kolyma Tales. Penguin Books.

External links

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