The Way Back

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Movie
German title The Way Back
Original title The Way Back
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2010
length 133 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Peter Weir
script Peter Weir
Keith R. Clarke
production Duncan Henderson
Nigel Sinclair
Peter Weir
Joni Levin
music Burkhard von Dallwitz
camera Russell Boyd
cut Lee Smith
occupation

The Way Back - The long road is an American film drama from the year 2010 . The literary film adaptation of the novel The Long Way: My Escape from the Gulag by Sławomir Rawicz tells the story of a group of prisoners of war who fled the Gulag in Siberia during the Second World War and, despite all odds, escaped to India via Mongolia .

action

During the Second World War in the eastern part of Poland conquered by the Soviet Union, the young Pole Janusz Wieszczek was accused of being a foreign spy as part of the Stalinist purges . Due to a forced confession from his wife, he is sentenced to 20 years of forced labor and taken to a gulag in Siberia . Life is tough there and food rations are scarce. In addition to the political prisoners, there are also thieves and murderers in the camp who are cruel and have no sympathy. Janusz meets the Russian actor Khabarov, who seems to give him hope by pretending to know how to break out of the gulag. You just need some time to gather supplies for the escape. But Janusz does not seem to survive until then, after he has been assigned to forced labor in the mine, nor is Khabarov serious about him. The American engineer Smith introduces himself by the first name Mister and explains to Janusz that Khabarov is just a leech who draws his life force from the hope of others. But since Mr. Smith estimates his own survival in the mine at no more than six months, he in turn urges Janusz to break out.

After Mr. Smith saved the lives of the guards with his courageous demeanor towards numerous prisoners on a march to work in a snowstorm , Janusz plans to flee with him and other allies: the Yugoslav accountant Zoran, the Latvian priest Voss and two Polish people Compatriots , the night blind Kazik and the artist Tomasz. In addition, the Russian criminal Valka joined those who wanted to flee through blackmail and as the owner of a knife. Janusz estimates the distance to Lake Baikal to the south at around 500 km, the shore of which they want to follow and finally cross the border to Mongolia . In the next snowstorm they wait until the changing of the guard, switch off a generator, cut open the barbed wire fence and flee through the woods, while the snowstorm obliterates the tracks and makes tracking almost impossible. Although they manage to escape, they have to avoid the usual routes as they have a bounty on them. When the provisions are running out and the group is getting worse and worse, Valka suggests that they should go stealing in order to feed themselves. But everyone else is against it because they are not criminals. Shortly thereafter, Kazik dies, who gets lost in the dark because of his night blindness and freezes to death not far from their camp site.

After the group sought shelter in a cave on the way to Lake Baikal, it seems that the next one will soon die - but Janusz finally finds the way to Lake Baikal. During their journey, they avoid the villages and feed on what they find in nature. At some point, the young Polish girl Irena, also on the run, joins the group. However, the food deprivation makes the travelers worse and worse, until Valka separates from the group, goes on a hunt in a village and gets meat. Valka is also the next to leave the group. When crossing the Russian-Mongolian border, he decided not to travel on with the others, but to stay in his home country and try his luck there. That doesn't spoil the group's good mood, however, as they have finally reached Mongolia, a supposedly free country. Soon, however, they are horrified to find that communism has now also reigned here. So they decide to travel through the country to come to British-ruled India .

Little did they suspect that they would have to cross the Gobi desert for weeks to do this. The exertions are so great that their supplies quickly run out and the entire group is on the verge of death. By chance they discover an abandoned oasis that not only donates water, but also offers the opportunity to regenerate. But on the march through the desert heat, the inevitable comes. Irena dies of heat stroke before it hits Tomasz. Completely exhausted and dehydrated , close to death, the other four finally reach the southern edge of the desert and find water and small animals for food, and thus regain their strength. They march on to Tibet and are received as guests in Lhasa by Buddhist monks. Mr. Smith plans to reach an American base in China from here and travel on from there. The monks offer the group to wait until spring before they would cross the Himalayas to come to India. Janusz, however, is restless and, unlike the group, cannot rest. He is urged to march on and return to his wife, which is why he sets out on his own. Zoran and Voss notice this and follow him across the Himalayan mountains until after twelve months of walking the three finally arrive in India, where they are free and received as guests.

But Janusz has not yet reached his wife. Only after world history had taken its course and event after event had gone through the rise and fall of communism, he was able to travel to the now free Poland in 1989 and see his beloved wife again after a good 50 years.

criticism

“In massive landscape panoramas that emphasize the smallness of people, the drama tells of the exposure of people in a situation in which their own humanity is at stake in the face of inhuman circumstances. Less interested in the concrete historical story and in a psychological exploration of the characters, it is about the ' conditio humana ' in borderline situations. "

- Lexicon of international film

“It is still the least evil that Weir's film is based on a book - 'The Long Road: My Escape from the Gulag' by Sławomir Rawicz - which is highly controversial because it may tell a true story, but not the author's itself is, even though it is issued that way. It is more difficult that the individuals are only briefly sketched out and roughly motivated, so that despite the big stars (including the German Sebastian Urzendowsky) the figures remain very woodcut-like. And despite the great panoramas and landscapes captured by the cameraman Russell Boyd, the threat posed by nature is often only asserted and is not painfully perceptible, as is always the case with Weir. "

- Peter Zander on welt.de

" The Way Back is as big as a film can be."

- Los Angeles Times

"Weir lets the viewer participate in the unbelievable physical and psychological strains of his characters."

- Hamburger Abendblatt

"Peter Weir at the height of his work."

- The Hollywood Reporter

Awards

publication

The Way Back opened in theaters on January 21, 2011 and with a production budget of around 30 million US dollars, it was only able to reap a little more than 20 million US dollars at the box office. The film started in Germany on June 30, 2011 and has been available on DVD since November 25, 2011 .

Trivia

  • The non-fiction author Anne Applebaum worked as a historical advisor on the film.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Way Back - The long way . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , April 2011 (PDF; test number: 127 073 K).
  2. ↑ The Way Back. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Peter Zander: Escape from Stalin's Gulag - humans become animals on welt.de from July 1, 2011, accessed on January 5, 2012
  4. ↑ The Way Back (2010) on boxofficemojo.com (English), accessed January 5, 2012.
  5. ↑ Anne Applebaum at imdb.com (English), accessed on August 20, 2019.