An uncompromising story of survival and the search for freedom and home

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2011)

The Way Back is a bit of a puzzler. It's directed by Peter Weir, whose last picture, 2003's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, was a surprise commercial hit and racked up 10 Oscar nominations, including two wins, and the cast, while not blinding with star-wattage, isn't exactly completely unknown. Based on - or, rather, inspired by - a popular, though later debunked, memoir, this movie had all the makings of a prestige picture ripe for awards and critical praise. However, aside from a brief rumor of an earlier-than-expected release all the way back at the end of 2009, The Way Back has rarely been talked about, receiving a muted screening at the 2010 Telluride Film Festival and a barely-there, Oscar-qualifying run in mid-December before entering theaters nationwide with little of the fanfare one might have anticipated.
At the same time, though, once you have seen the actual film, the reluctance of major studios or distributors to back it is surprisingly understandable. The Way Back isn't what you would call audience-friendly. There are subtitles (in fact, the entire opening scene is in Russian) and characters with hard-to-pronounce-or-remember names, and the plot is at a bare minimum; long stretches of the film consist of little more than people walking and scourging for food or water. It's a World War II movie, but instead of battling soldiers or the Holocaust, it focuses on those oft-overlooked victims of the war: the prisoners in Soviet gulags, which ultimately claimed the lives of more than one and a half million people.
Weir approaches this material the way a documentary or news article views its subject. Using stark, unstylized cinematography to capture the brutality and harsh beauty of the landscapes involved and a stripped-down score by Burkhard von Dallwitz, he's unsparing, almost methodical, yet there's something strangely impersonal about the whole affair. In the hands of another director, Steven Spielberg for example, The Way Back would probably have been a grand, tear-jerking opera about survival against the odds and humanity's struggle to find freedom, the sort of epic spectacle the movie-going public loves. That's not to say Peter Weir doesn't address these themes; he simply does so without much showboating. Instead, he opts for realism over overt emotional catharsis, and as a result, we sympathize more with the characters' situation than with the people themselves. When someone dies, and that happens quite a few times, we process it as an unfortunate yet inevitable occurrence, rather than a genuinely heartbreaking tragedy. We learn names, professions, backgrounds, but the characters, even Janusz, our chief protagonist, remain stubbornly enigmatic.
That said, there's little, if anything, technically wrong with this movie. The cast is the definition of a good ensemble: all involved give strong performances, no individual rising - or seeking to rise - above the others. Keith R. Clarke's script is well-paced and surprisingly engaging considering the rather repetitive nature of the story. If anything, I would have liked it to be longer as the film-makers completely skipped over the final leg of Janusz's journey, the daunting trek over the Himalayas into India, a move that feels prompted out of fear of scaring audiences away with a lengthier running-time (the film as it is already clocks in at 132 minutes). Peter Weir's direction is admirable. Like he did with Master and Commander, he injects life into material that might have otherwise been stilted and un-cinematic.
The Way Back isn't the easiest movie to stomach. Weir refuses to gloss over or sugarcoat the realities of either life in a gulag or the adversities the prisoners must face once they escape; this is a world where kindness is a weakness that can be deadly to those who exhibit it, and in one scene, two characters discuss which one of their companions they should eat first, if necessary. The make-up department deserves some kudos for their efforts to make these normally attractive actors convincing as rugged, beleaguered travelers struggling to make it through each day.
Yet, there is one question that lingers at the heart of this film: Is it worth it? Not only does Janusz endure 4,000 miles of what looks like hell on Earth, but when he finally comes out alive, he's unable to return home, exiled by an oppressive government for crimes he didn't commit. Rather than simply ending with the characters' victorious arrival in India, Peter Weir puts their tale into perspective by using black-and-white newsreel footage to trace events from the end of World War II, through the Cold War and, finally, with the demise of communism and the Soviet Union. These historic clips are accompanied by the shadow of two feet continuously moving forward, one in front of the other, and as the montage fades to show Janusz reuniting with his home and beloved, long-suffering wife forty years after his journey across a continent, we realize the answer: yes.