You Can Go home Again

2011_5_05 You Can Go Home Again

Peter Weir made one of my favorite thrillers, “Witness.” He has a reputation of being one of the best directors to come from Australia. But he hasn’t made a movie in seven years. His ‘comeback’ choice for a movie was a script based on a fantastic true story, a prison break followed by a long trek home. However, this was no garden-variety escape from prison; this prison was a Gulag, one of 450 concentration camps that Joe Stalin had built in Soviet Siberia, and the long trek home was a 4000 mile walk through formidable and punishing environments. A small band of multinational prisoners manage to escape in the middle of winter and begin a walk in a southerly direction and with no compass to guide them. The title of the movie says it all, “The Way Back.” The subtitle could be “Absolute Determination.”
The journey began in 1941. After fleeing the guards and dogs they first had to walk through the frozen forests of Siberia; then negotiate Mongolia and the Gobi Desert; and then, last but not least, they had to cross Tibet and the Himalayas, finally ending up in Darjeeling in Northern India.

The natural leader of the group was a young Polish officer named Janusz (Jim Sturgess) who was in the Gulag because his wife was tortured and forced to say he was a spy. He knew how to survive in the wilds and his will to survive was an example to the others, who were more inclined to give in to starvation and exhaustion. There was an older American in the group they called “Mister” (Ed Harris) and a Russian criminal, Valka (Colin Farrell), the only man in the band who possessed a knife, a weapon and tool that would come in handy during their journey. Another Russian was an artist who recorded their journey with drawings all along the way south. A Russian teenager who started with the group was lost in a blinding snowstorm and froze to death. A young Polish girl, Irena (Saoirse Ronan), was picked up along the way. Mister thinks they should leave her, for she would be a liability to the group, but he ends up having very fatherly feelings toward her. She made it as far as halfway across the Gobi Desert where her frailness was no longer equal to the task and she dies. Valka had left the band early on, once they are out of Siberia. He wanted to return to Mother Russia and had decided to take his chances there. He was quite a character as well as being ruthless inside the Gulag. His body is covered with tattoos, including a large picture of Stalin on his chest. He nearly kills one of his fellow travelers who spoke ill of the dictator. Valka said Stalin robs the rich and gives to the poor, which was a rather naive view of the Soviet tyrant. Farrell plays him with steely-eyed intensity and with a touch of madness.

Naturally, food and water were always in short supply. The band ate bugs, sucked on tree bark, enjoyed snake meat, and once even feasted on a deer. Their clothes were in tatters by the end of their ‘long march.’ Their shoes were pitiful, the cause of bloody toes, which was a constant problem for everyone.

One thing my wife appreciated in the story was the least hint of lust after Irena joined the band. She was treated as one of the group, period. But they are all saddened by her death. Sex was the last thing on the men’s minds; it was a luxury no one could afford.

My wife saw the movie with me right after she had watched “Survivor” on CBS TV. As a result the movie grabbed her emotionally right away. She was attentive all the way and in tears a couple of times. I could not resist teasing her a bit about survival as a parlor game played by scantily clad young women and young six pack males on a tropical Island while all of them struggle for the big bucks at the end of the rainbow, as opposed the reality of survival as the real thing, an honest-to-god life or death struggle, as “The Way Back” exemplified and illustrated.