The Way Back

Le Salon

Six men and one woman brave the elements of Eurasia

By Adam Keleman

Peter Weir's portrait of the endurance of man when facing the impossible

Based on Slavomir Rawicz's novel The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, Peter Weir's The Way Back chronicles the long, tedious journey of six escaped, multi-national Gulag prisoners as they make their way across eastern Europe and Asia. Starting off at the Gulag labor camp in Siberia, the film introduces us to the varying cast of enslaved men, from Colin Farrell's bull-headed, tattooed Russian convict, Valka, to a nimble Polish ex-soldier, Janusz, played by Jim Sturgess.

Suffering at the whims of a cruel winter and corrupt communist-led troops, the men band together and slyly elude guards, taking refuge in the nearby, snow-covered forest. Along the way, they find a desperate Polish teenage girl following not far behind. The pragmatic, American elder Mr. Smith, played by Ed Harris, feels the clan would be better off without the deadweight, but despite his griping, she is by their sides soon enough.

In their darkest hours, they manage to survive near-starvation, freezing and boiling temperatures, and hordes of ravenous mosquitoes, all in an effort to evade communist rule and attain freedom. Not all last on the arduous, risky trail, though, and it's quite devastating to see them fade away, nearly one by one, at the unmerciful and punishing hands of nature.

Weir, a director known for slowly building and sustaining mood and atmosphere, as seen in his previous works Picnic at Hanging Rock and Witness, returns to his roots with The Way Back, a lingering, psychological character study ruminating on the endurance of man when facing the impossible. He uses the subtle differences between this ragtag group of wayfarers to bond them, as well as to quietly dig at each other as the long days pass. They share some harrowing stories of being under communist rule, but also question each others' motives, like when Smith repeatedly interrogates the orphaned Irena (Saoirse Ronan) and Valka postulates which men will die one evening while they slept.

The film's greatest moments occur when Weir allows the camera to gently capture the banality of day-to-day life; the audience truly gets a sense of their camaraderie as they wash their clothes in a river together and hunt for food. It is a testament to the actors, from Harris to Sturgess, that these men come off as a lively bunch despite the dire prospects that lay ahead. In addition, Ronan inhabits her character with a wide-eyed naiveté, playing Irena as a girl forever lost but somehow managing to survive all this time. Not enough can be said about those radiant blue eyes of hers; as the band crosses the Gobi desert, her pale skin begins to crisp and burn, but her eyes remain a bright blue, the one sign of hope still left.
Less visually austere than Kelly Reichardt's superb, meandering trek though the Oregon desert, Meek's Cutoff, The Way Back manages to burrow deep into the minds of these wounded men without ever sentimentalizing their predicament.

Another slight disparity between the two films is a bit more back-story is revealed of the men's lives in The Way Back, whereas Meek's Cutoff never utilized plot points and bits of character history as narrative thrust, choosing instead to focus solely on the present rut the travelers found themselves in.

As a somewhat optimistic portrait of a clan of men brought together under communist control, the film never feels like a history lesson in the Gulag penal system, despite an unnecessary chronology of events listed as flash cards at the end of the film. What can ultimately be taken from this lengthy cinematic experience is people's unique ability to outlast and hold steady through adversity, enduring the harshest of conditions in order to reclaim their lives.

ADVERTISEMENT