The Way Back

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2018)

Peter Weir's depiction of survival in The Way Back is raw and gripping in its cinematic artistry. Wide shots of the landscape and geography complement the pain and suffering endured by the escapees. The opening scenes depict the Soviet Union's interrogation tactics that forced friends and family to turn on one another, as Janusz's wife turned on him. Janusz's twenty-year sentence to a Gulag labor camp in Siberia is realistic.
The film's depiction of camp life is also historically accurate to a degree. In the opening camp scenes, the audience sees new internes getting their heads shaved and the deterioration of internees, who have been in the camp. Some of these internees are blind. Furthermore, hierarchy and bartering is explored within the camp. An inversion of hierarchy is observed as the criminals have power within the camp system. One of these criminals, Valka later expresses his fondness of Stalin and communism, when the escapees trek from Siberia to India. Gulags often had prisoners with various political persuasions. The addition of this character complicated the narrative and added to the heterogeneity of the escapees. One of the other escapees, Mr. Smith is an American played by Ed Harris. Some Americans living in Russia were sentenced to years or decades in the gulags because foreigners were seen as threatening to the Soviet regime. The insertion of Saoirse Ronan's character, Irena, served the narrative as she bonded the other escapees and revealed their histories to the audience. Ultimately, the film portrayed how desperation and hope coexisted within the camps.