Surprisingly Interesting

Rating: 8/10 (29 March 2018)

To be completely honest, this is not one of my favorite genres of movies. People are bound to die, scenes tend to get repetitive, and some parts are usually very gruesome. However, I found myself liking this movie more and more as I think about it deeper. The movie The Way Back tries its best to be as historically accurate as possible and incorporates fascinating graphics and visuals to add on to the possibly boring story.
It is hard to separate the historical analysis when viewing movies like this, as The Way Back touches on the Russian Gulag camps. Surprisingly, this movie did a relatively good job in depicting the Gulag. Although the description may not be extensive enough, it shows the lethality of the landscape and the climate, as shown in people falling and dying in the snowstorm. By showing the prisoners working in mines and in forests, it illustrates the heavy manual labor that the prisoners were subjected to. Moreover, it portrays how the prisoners were divided, with professional criminals dominating others. It also accurately represents the presence of people supporting Communism even within the camps, as shown with the character Valka, and the presence of Americans in the Soviet Union who moved to escape the Depression. Personally, I found the exchanges of goods very interesting, because this is the first camp-related movie that I saw that shows what people did exactly to survive in detail.
Outside of the historical perspective, I think the movie also did a good job in depicting the journey from the camp to India. Although it is slightly longer than it needs to be, we have to acknowledge that it is hard to make a movie out of people walking for months. The themes can be very repetitive as well - traveling in hunger, coldness, heat, and lack of water. However, it did not feel as repetitive as I expected it to be. Every time the scenes seem too long or start to get boring, something happens. For example, one of the travelmates die, find a well in the desert, discover something new about a character, or find helpful people. These elements are scattered throughout effectively to not lose the audience's focus. Additionally, the make-ups and graphics are on point, which adds the realistic and thrilling feeling to the story.
One thing that could have been better is the ending. I got a sense that it ended too abruptly after the characters reached Tibet. I understand that if the movie continued on, it would get extremely repetitive and long, but I think it could have at least showed the audience what their lives were like after the journey, giving a better closure. Nonetheless, it was definitely an interesting movie.