A grave injustice to Slavomir Rawicz

Rating: 1/10 (9 October 2018)

Please go and buy a copy of Slavomir Rawicz book.
My father had the pleasure of meeting Slavomir many years ago (before he passed). They shared a cup of tea in his modest front room and for several hours he generously gave my father his time as they talked about the harrowing experiences and miraculous survival described in the accounts of the book.
Before my father left, he asked if Slavomir would sign his copy of the book and of course he graciously and humbly obliged, a kind, a humble, a modest and inspiring man. This is the copy I now have. It will always be one of my most treasured possessions.
The passion, the depth, the feeling in this book, it is like nothing else I have ever read. It has affected me and stayed with me from the first time I read it. It just captivated me and made my heart ache. No matter how many times I read it, I cannot stop myself from crying. You come to know each person Slavomir travels with, you come to know Slavomir himself and you feel his pain and you feel the pain of his losses and the pain of his struggles. You wonder how any person could survive one, yet alone all of the undertakings he describes.
The writing just blows you away. You are left in awe. You are left wondering how you have ever complained in your life. After finishing the book you sit completely numb, completely humbled. You wish you could tell this man he is a hero.
You are thankful for everything you have ever taken for granted and for everything you have. You will never forget this book.
Slavomir told my father, he did not want a movie. That it would be dramatising the terrible deaths of the people he described, who he thought of as family, and a dishonor to their memory.
The film was made after he died.
It is terrible. It misses whole miraculous accounts from the book that are crucial to its structure. It has no depth. It has no heart. It completely lacks the gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching feeling the books carves into your soul.
It is horribly American type dramatisation, empty, shallow, without feeling, without power, exactly what Slavomir feared. It bears no resemblance to the book.
I actually watched it by accident when my partner had it on and it wasn't for half an hour that I realized it was supposed to be an adaptation based on Slavomir's book. Please read the real story. If they ever made a film, I hoped it would be a masterpiece. The book was a masterpiece. Slavomir deserved a masterpiece. This is hollow, failing to encompass any emotion or any of the magic of the book. Read it. Then come back to the film and see it for what it is. Garbage.
"I felt suddenly bereft of friends, bereft of everything, as desolate and lonely as a man could be."- Slavomir Rawicz xxx RIP xxx