I’ve still got plenty of unposted reviews sitting around. Here’s one worth reading. (They all are, but this one in particular.)
The Way Back is going to end up as one of those orphans of history. This article from the LA Times somewhat explains what happened, as the movie was one of the last to be shown during the 2010 calendar year, in order to qualify for nominations. Ultimately, it just plain came in too late to register in key circles, and too many other movies had too much juice. Really, what I’m telling you is that certain other movies benefitted from much deeper pockets for promotion and campaigning. That’s not to say that those other movies weren’t very good… but they were very much the pretty girl with the rich daddy. That’s how the Oscars work sometimes. It’s not only a popularity contest, but sometimes it’s a race between steep investments as well.
So as far as the Academy Awards go, at least, The Way Back was lost in the cracks. Unjustly, I might add.
The Way Back is the latest movie from Peter Weir (Witness, Dead Poets Society, Fearless, The Truman Show, etc.), who is a director who doesn’t work all that often but usually makes it count when he does. Here is no exception. Working in part from a book called The Long Walk by Slawomir Rawicz, and in equal part to his own typical painstaking research, Weir tells the story of an international group of POWs who escape a Siberian gulag during wartime, and who literally walk their way back to freedom. Not all of them make it.
The day that I saw this movie was a noticeably chilly afternoon. When I came into the building, I was internally belly-aching about the weather. After the screening ended, when I stepped out onto the still-windy city streets, I had been taught a valuable lesson. The movie was a great reminder to quit whining and be grateful for the ease at which I’m able to bundle up and seek refuge when it gets cold in New York.
The Way Back brings a freshness to that most mind-numbing of clichés: It’s an affirmation of life. It forces viewers like me to appreciate the benefit of our circumstance, almost to the point of taking your mind out of the movie – you remember that if you’re in a movie theater, then by definition you have it easier than many people have throughout history.
Peter Weir’s work is known for its attention to detail, and for the fierce commitment elicited from his casts. This film’s production design, by John Stoddart and Kes Bonnet (among others), is tremendous. At no moment during the movie do you doubt that you’re watching an authentic Soviet prison camp, or the surrounding forests of Siberia, or the stark scenery of the border with Mongolia, or the vast and punishing expanses of the Gobi desert. Working again with cinematographer Russell Boyd (Master & Commander), Weir knows how to best bring these diverse sceneries, only some of which were filmed on the actual locations, to convincing life. The cold and the heat look excruciating.
But nowhere do you see the ravages of the elements more clearly than in the characters’ faces; in their burdened brows, their narrowing frames, in their chapped lips, their scorched pallor. If there’s any flaw in the storytelling (and some of the reviews seem to think so), it’s only due to the enormity of the situation: You may not feel like you got to know these people as well as you might have, because you’re mostly watching them forced to act and react to the oppressive environments, and just as arduously, to their individual stances of distrust and caginess.
None of these characters, particularly early on, are able to trust each other, or to feel close to one another, and that well-practiced reluctance never entirely dissipates. Weir is bold enough to commit to the unsentimentality of the cold worldview that these characters are forced to maintain, and allows the actors to shade in all of the subtler shifts and changes in their outlook.
Jim Sturgess, as a young Polish political prisoner and the group’s de facto leader, and Saoirse Ronan, as a much younger girl who they meet along the way, represent innocents who are thrust into a world of savagery and must learn to survive. The great Ed Harris plays the taciturn and impenetrable Mr. Smith, an American, as a tragically impassive statue who has adopted a seemingly callous demeanor in response to the constant exposure to cruelty and horror that the World War II era had in abundance for Europe. The deeply underrated Colin Farrell has a much smaller role, but he plays his character as a ferocious caged animal, a ravenously wolfish incarnation of innate violence and circumstantial desperation. It’s a disturbing portrayal.
There are three stages to the storyline: the iciness of the gulag and of the wilderness the characters escape into, the punishing nowhere of the deserts, and finally (mild spoiler), the glorious verdant greenness of safety, when the few remaining characters crest the Himalayas to arrive in India. Ultimately, it’s very simple and traditional storytelling, with a very complex and profound morality. The point of the movie isn’t to surprise or shock you, and it isn’t exactly fun, but it’s a journey worth taking. There’s a substance, a real tactile weight, to this movie, that even the best films of 2010 couldn’t hope to replicate.
The Way Back is a movie that enlivens consideration of a time too often forgotten, and makes its audience appreciate the moment we are in, no matter how difficult our personal realities may be. There can be few nobler aims for a feature film to strive towards.
