Not really based on a true story

Rating: 8/10 (13 October 2011)

Now the question that is raised regarding this film is 'is it true?' There are a lot of suggestions that it is not, and Weir is deliberately vague at the beginning where he says that he 'dedicates this film' to three men who reportedly appeared out of the Himalayas in 1945. He does not suggest that this film is based upon of true story, though it is based upon a book by a Pole named Slawomir Rawicz, who alleges that he escape from a Soviet Gulag in Siberia during a blizzard and travelled over 6000 km to freedom. However, documentary evidence suggests that this did not happen, but rather that he was freed and sent to Iran. Another story is that Rawicz stole the idea from another Pole who made that claim, and further, there is a suggestion that the British in India debriefed a trio who had claimed that they had walked from Siberia.
The question is, is it possible? Well, my suggestion would be that it is, though the journey is fraught with dangers. Not only does one have to evade the Soviet army (and the locals, as any escaped prisoners have a bounty on their head) but they would have had to cross the Gobi desert and then the Himalayas. Of the seven that escaped from the camp, only four of them survived, and one departed in Tibet when he decided to return to the United States through China. However, I would suggest that the most difficult and gruelling part of the journey would have been across the Gobi Desert, and the film is very clear about that.
I did think that this was a good film, despite the authenticity of the story being doubtful. Peter Weir does make very good films, and this is no exception. However it is very long, though that is to be expected of such a film like this. One in a way would like to have followed their course on a map, and I am suspicious that not only a directly southern route would have got them to Tibet (it wouldn't have) or that once they had crossed the Gobi desert they would have come to the Great Wall of China. I suspect the Great Wall, or at least the section they encountered, was much farther to the east than where they would have been.
I could say that this movie is all about human endurance and survival, and while it is, it is not necessarily the case. The main character (whom Weir deliberately did not name Rawicz) was sentenced to the Gulags on a trumped up charges based on evidence that was tortured out of his wife. However he does not hold a grudge against his wife and he one desire is to return to her so that he may forgive her. This is what motivates him, and drives him on, however, as we know, it was going to be another fifty odd years before the wall comes down enabling him to return to his wife.