The performances are uniformly strong, though very broad, with much of the cast working thick accents to express a certain weary mania that comes with starvation and isolation. The light here is the feeling of inspiration and interaction as the group grows to rely on one another during the more grueling segments of the path, bonding as they hunt for food and water, face bodily trauma, and share desperate thoughts. Slowly reduced to feral creatures (Weir makes a potent parallel to wolf behavior at one point), the group stumbles on, and we watch as sores develop, jaundice sets in, body fat is depleted, and the human form becomes a gallery of misery. Two hours of men suffering may not seem like an appetizing viewing proposition, but to truly feel the miracle at hand, one must endure the pains of passage.
Weir lingers on the snow, sun, and sand, making the viewer feel the length of this journey, slowing down the picture to push viscerally through paralyzing hunger and thirst. It’s a tale of bonding and wartime despair, yet the film primarily fixates on the mindset of endurance, and how that light can illuminate the way through arduous conditions and unbearable self-doubt.Ĭelebrated director Weir is an apt choice for the material, furthering his career observance of natural elements at war with human insistence. Boosted by their shared love of freedom, the companionship of a young girl (Saoirse Ronan) they pick up along the way, and the drive of their survival instinct, the group carries on to the brink of death, hoping to reclaim what’s left of their lives when they finally reach a safe haven.īased on a memoir written by one of the survivors, “The Way Back” is an astounding story of perseverance in the face of certain doom, isolating the spiritual drive of men who refuse to march obediently to their death, preferring to perish as “free men” out in the wilds of the world. Encouraged by Smith (Ed Harris), an American prisoner, Janusz and a small band of inmates, including violent Russian criminal Valka (Colin Farrell), make a break for it, only to face a 4000-kilometer walk across unforgivable terrain.
Humiliated, starved, and freezing, Janusz is ready to escape, a thought quelled by his fellow inmates, who find the task impossible. At the dawn of WWII, Polish solider Janusz (Jim Sturgess) is sent to Siberia for detainment, thrown inside a brutal gulag located in the middle of a forbidding frozen wasteland.
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