Film File - The Way Back

In what will surely become one of the hits of the Christmas movie season, 'The Way Back' charts the ill-fated fortunes of a small band of convicts who stage a daring escape from a World War II-era Siberian gulag, only to embark on a treacherous journey across five countries in a desperate race for freedom and survival. Adapted from author Slavomir Rawicz's memoir 'The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom', director Peter Weir's sweeping drama stars Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess, Mark Strong and Saoirse Ronan. It's an uncompromising and brutal film, and far from the usual Christmas feelgood fare, but one that will linger long in the memory both for its powerful and uplifting story and the performances of the strong cast. Weir has always taken the full-on position as director - and this outing is no different as he plumbs the depths of human endurance in a journey as harrowing and harsh as anything seen on screen all year. With a classic back catalogue that includes 'Picnic At Hanging Rock', 'Gallipoli', 'Witness' and 'The Truman Show', Weir has always chosen only projects that appeal to him - his last was 'Master & Commander: The Far Side Of The World' in 2003. The story, based Rawicz's memoir, begins in Soviet-occupied Poland, with a military officer Janusz (Jim Sturgess) facing life in a Siberian gulag after his wife is tortured into framing him for a criminal offence. Thrust into the savage hell that was Stalin's enormous prison network where up to four million prisoners languished at any one time, Janusz enters a nightmare otherworld where starving men are worked to death felling timber in the forests or labouring in the poisonous bowels of the gold mines. Prisoners knew that the wire fences, ferocious dogs and well-armed soldiers are only the first barrier to escape as the endless and unforgiving Siberian landscape facing any escapee had always proven impossible to beat. The book was originally optioned by actor Laurence Harvey in the 1960s, and was eventually passed on to Burt Lancaster, but then went into development hell for 40 years until Weir found a way to give it the green light. Despite the fact that a recent BBC documentary suggested that Rawicz's account of the journey was possible fiction as documents appeared to prove he had been released from prison in 1942 as part of the Russian amnesty for Polish prisoners, the story on-screen remains a harrowing piece of cinema. We are told at the opening that only three people make it to India, the question is who will they be? Hatching a plot to cut the electrical wire during a snowstorm that will cover their tracks, the group head thousands of miles across a barren wilderness to Lake Baikal. They include an American ex-pat caught up in Stalin's terror, Mr Smith (Ed Harris), the tattooed petty criminal Valka (Colin Farrell), the religious Voss (Gustaf Skarsgard), an artist Tomasc (Alexandru Potocean), and a teenage boy Kazik (Sebastian Urzendowsky). While Sturgess operates as the leader of the group, it's Farrell who gets most of the good lines - at one point suggesting that the inevitable fatalities en route mean the survivors will at least have flesh to eat. Along the way, they encounter a teenage girl, Irina (Saoirse Ronan), who is reluctantly allowed to join the dwindling group. After the hell of sub-zero Siberia comes the broiling Gobi Desert, and then the Himalayas - the final barrier to the freedom expected in India. Along the way, each individual reflects on the path that brought them to this pass, again with Farrell making the biggest impact. For a film of sweeping vistas and stunning climatic scenarios, 'The Way Back' has obvious appeal for the armchair traveller in all of us. Some of the characters are one-dimensional, and the sheer drudgery of their circumstances does get somewhat weary after a while. Overall, though, Peter Weir fills the film with enough drama and emotional theatrics to keep the attention engaged as you await the next member to fall.