Gorgeous wartime drama

Rating: 7/10 (15 February 2016)

Peter Weir's epic wartime drama The Way Back is a feast for the eyes and ears, if spread a little emotionally thin. It presents us people dealing with severely hard times, and unlike many films like this, it actually shows the toll that living back then took on both the body and the soul, as the characters it focuses on are put through a wringer and then some. It concerns a handful of prisoners and their escape from a Russian prisoner of war camp. It then chronicles their subsequent journey across the vastness of the Gobi desert and their hopeful arrival in the safety of Tibet. The opening of the film in the dank, unleasent and overcrowded gulag is a stark contrast to the open air natural beauty which comes later in the film. Ed Harris plays the stoic leader type like he does best, a caged animal of a man looking for any option for escape. A blustering fool (Mark Strong) keeps talking of making a break for it, but that's all he ever really does is talk. It's not until Harris hooks up with a skeezy bandit (a nicely nasty Colin Farrell) that the opportunity comes, and the pack of them seize it, making a harebrained scattershot run for the hills. And so their adventure begins, set against some of the most beautiful, awe inspiring scenery ever put on film. Across the Russian plains and into the unforgiving, immeasurable expanse of the Gobi, seeing many sights along the way, and tested by both man and nature at every turn. They are joined by an orphaned village girl (a heartbreaking Saoirse Ronan) as well. The film let's the characters take a backseat to the sheer scope of the natural world around them, a narrative and tonal choice which may leave some viewers feeling alienated. I was reminded of the expression 'Figures In A Landscape', a term used in many paintings, films and abstract discussion. It can mean a lot artistically, but it came to me in the notion that we almost watch the film from nature's perspective itself, only half understanding the creatures who blunder around in its playground, full of secrets and above all, harsh but fair in its treatment of humans. A film bereft of much of the melodrama often found in the genre, but rich in visual splendor and scope.