With a night-time blizzard as cover, seven prisoners, caught up in Stalin’s Reign of Terror, escape a Soviet Gulag in 1940. They are now free men and, almost certainly, dead men… for their impending trek to safety defies any reasonable chance of success and the landscape they must cross is unforgiving.
With little food or equipment, and no certainty of their location or intended direction, they embark on a journey that will present unimaginable hardship and drama. Driven by base animal instincts – survival and fear – while relying on evolved human traits – compassion and trust – the group endures transformative experiences that are profound and abysmal, anguished and ecstatic. All the while, they abide by one unceasing mandate: keep moving, keep moving, keep moving…
Peter Weir says, ‘Our film is inspired by the Slavomir Rawicz novel, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, which I thought was a wonderful combination of a prison story and survival tale. We travel with our characters across four seasons, 12 months and some 10,000 kilometres, seeing how their behaviour and personalities are affected by such harsh circumstances. Self-reliance is a requisite in the Gulag, but on this trek the men will have to depend on each other and break down the walls each has built around himself, if any are to make it through alive.’
As in such acclaimed films as Master and Commander, The Truman Show, Fearless and Gallipoli, Weir again places human nature under the microscope of duress. Ordinary people are subjected to extraordinary events and environments, forcing them to peel away facades and peer inside themselves.
Says producer Joni Levin, ‘Peter is wonderfully adept at using compelling narratives to examine human behaviour. After many years of development, and continual hurdles on this project, it is thrilling and fortuitous that it wound up in the hands of the one director who can best tell the story.’
The narrative commences in the harsh confines of the Gulag before moving to the frozen forests of Siberia, the vast plains of Mongolia and the scorching torment of the Gobi Desert – the characters struggling against the elements and each other. Set against stunning geographical vistas, the plot centres around a young Polish outdoorsman, Janusz (Jim Sturgess), whose keen survival skills will make him the fugitives’ de facto leader.
An officer in the Polish cavalry, which was fighting the Nazis, Janusz is one of thousands of Polish soldiers imprisoned when the Soviet Red Army advanced into Poland from the east. Arrested as a spy for having come into contact with Germans, and for speaking English, Janusz is tortured, sentenced, and force-marched to Siberia. A signed statement from his wife, also extracted under torture, sealed his fate.
‘Everyone in the group has his own reasons for wanting to escape, and my character’s arrival sort of puts the final piece of the puzzle in place,’ says Jim Sturgess. ‘Janusz is well-educated but he’s also a woodsman who knows how to find his way through the forest. He believes escape is possible, and is absolutely determined to do so because he wants to get home to forgive his wife of the horrendous guilt he knows she’s suffering. He must get free to
free her.’
Janusz’s accomplices include a taciturn American structural engineer, Mr Smith (Ed Harris), and a violently unpredictable Russian, Valka (Colin Farrell). Valka belongs to a vicious stratum of convicted street criminals, ‘Urki,’ who are allowed to run the Gulags and intimidate the ‘political’ inmates.
‘The Gulag was a hierarchical society ruled by fear and intimidation,’ says Farrell. ‘There was some form of ethics of the Urki’s own design, but it was very harsh and violent. The guards lived in awful conditions, not much better than the prisoners. Paperwork was a nightmare. From their perspective, the more control they could bestow upon the Urki over certain elements of the system, the better.’
About his character he adds, ‘Valka grew up an orphan on the streets and has been institutionalised for most of his life. He’s quite capable of functioning within the Gulag. However, he has a penchant for playing cards, and, more problematic, losing at cards. So even though he is himself a dangerous man, he’s increasingly consumed by fear of reprisal over his substantial debts.’
Overhearing plans of the escape, Valka offers the services of his knife as a ‘negotiating point’ with Janusz, who agrees to let him join the breakout. ‘A deal with the devil,’ Mr Smith judges.
An enigmatic and quiet man, Mr Smith had travelled to Russia with his son to work on Moscow’s metro system. Arrested in the night, he was sent to Siberia. Says Harris, ‘I hadn’t been aware of this, but during the Great Depression, jobs in Russia were advertised in US newspapers. Thousands of Americans went there seeking work. When they arrived, the Russians would take their passports and require them to become Soviet citizens in order to be employed. When the purges started, they’d go for help to the American Embassy and be told, “Sorry, you gave up your citizenship, there’s nothing we can do for you.” So they were stuck.’ (Seven thousand Americans disappeared in the Gulags.)
Says Peter Weir, ‘Our characters, nearly all of whom are innocent of the charges for which they were sentenced, have been physically and mentally damaged even before arriving at the Gulag. Now they are on the run, coping with nature, and trying to avoid conflict with anyone in their path, knowing there is a bounty on their heads.’
Production notes
The Way Back
Director: Peter Weir
Production Company: Exclusive Films
Presented by: Exclusive Media Group, National Geographic Entertainment,
Imagenation Abu Dhabi
Executive Producers: Keith R. Clarke, John Ptak, Guy East, Simon Oakes, Tobin Armbrust, Jake Eberts, Edward Borgerding, Mohammed Khalaf, Adam Leipzig, Scott Rudin, Jonathan Schwartz
Producers: Joni Levin, Peter Weir, Duncan Henderson, Nigel Sinclair
Co-producer: Roee Sharon Peled
Casting: Lina Todd, Judy Bouley
Written by: Peter Weir
Inspired by ‘The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom’ by: Slavomir Rawicz
Director of Photography: Russell Boyd
Editor: Lee Smith
Production Designer: John Stoddart
Costume Designer: Wendy Stites
Music: Burkhard Dallwitz
Cast
Jim Sturgess (Janusz)
Ed Harris (Mr Smith)
Colin Farrell (Valka)
Saoirse Ronan (Irena)
Mark Strong (Khabarov)
Gustaf Skarsgård (Voss)
Alexandru Potocean (Tomasz)
Sebastian Urzendowsky (Kazik)
Dragos Bucur (Zoran)
UK-USA-UAE 2010
133 mins
Digital
With thanks to
Peter and Ingrid Weir
The Cars That Ate Paris and The Plumber will be released on BFI Blu-ray on 25 May
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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