Director Peter Weir thrives on placing individuals in harsh, unfamiliar environments. From Gallipoli and Witness to Fearless and The Truman Show, his characters are pilgrims in strange lands, slowly learning to adapt and overcome their new surroundings.
The Way Back, Weir's first film since 2003's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, finds the filmmaker in familiar territory. A small group of Polish, Russian and American POWs escape a Siberian labor camp in 1940 and must make their way to freedom in India by crossing some 4,000 miles of the most treacherous and unforgiving terrain on the planet. Talk about unfamiliar environments.
The escapees are led by the affable Janusz (played by Jim Sturgess), a former Polish solider, and the headstrong Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), the lone American of the group whose reason for incarceration is unclear. Both men are competent and quickly earn the respect of their companions, including Valka (played by Colin Farrell), a Russian criminal and staunch Stalin supporter. Along the way they pick up a young Polish girl (played by Saoirse Ronan) whose parents were killed by Russian soldiers.
What happens for the next two hours, amidst the Siberian wilderness, Gobi Desert and Himalayas, is pretty standard dramatic fare for this type of film. Characters succumb to the elements, fight over food and see visions in the snow and desert. Sturgess, Harris and Farrell make the most of their roles but you feel like you've seen these characters a dozen times before. None are overly compelling and original.
The real stars of The Way Back are the locales (not surprising as National Geographic is a producer). Even though Bulgaria stands in for Siberia and Morocco for the Gobi Desert, it's the scenery that drives the story and provides the film's true dramatic core. With one breathtaking shot after another, we are intimately ensconced in the characters' struggles and constantly reminded just how hopeless their plight really is.
While The Way Back is not Peter Weir's best film, it does extend a unique filmmaker's tradition of how one perseveres when dropped in a world outside their own. And that's always a place worth visiting.
