What Do The Critics Say?

"What a stirring, visually mesmeric, compelling tale of survival and fortitude it is. Weir’s unhurried, humanist direction elicits a raft of strong performances. An exceptional adventure story from one of the founding fathers of Australia’s modern cinema." Jim Schembri SYDNEY MORNING HERALD "It's not the sort of prison escape movie that Hollywood makes these days: it's more subtle, more moody, more restrained and it has no histrionics. The result is a film that avoids the cliches of predictable character types on the journey and shows us that humanity is indeed capable of decency even as it battles to survive. Sprinkled with gentle humour and eye catching images." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINIEFILE "At its heart, it's an adventure story and exotic travelogue, inviting viewers to tag along as an unlikely band of fugitives from a Siberian gulag walk across the Himalayas. It’s a tale, factual or not, of surviving extreme conditions and turning one’s life into an act of political defiance. 'Way Back’ moves in right direction." James Verniere BOSTON HERALD

"It may not seem like much of a compliment to say a movie makes you feel like you've walked four thousand miles, but "The Way Back" puts you in its characters' tattered shoes and makes you care whether they make it home or not. Adventure drama that doesn’t pull any punches about the long odds facing its heroes." Rob Thomas CAPITAL TIMES "The obstacles confronted by Janusz and his companions are numerous and seemingly insurmountable, yet kindness and forgiveness are the keys to his survival. Sturgess delivers an excellent performance. Ed Harris draws us to his Mr Smith, a man clinging to his anonymity as a desperate plea for salvation." Louise Keller URBAN CINIEFILE "That some people will do anything to survive even the harshest conditions, has a primal pull. This is an "inspired by" movie and is best approached in that spirit. The result is a film that seems simultaneously grand and skimpy. For all its faults, it's an honorable effort, though. I hope Weir doesn't wait seven more years for his next film." Peter Rainer CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

The Inside Story 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. Six-time Academy Award ® nominee and the films director, Peter Weir explains: "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, twelve months and some ten thousand kilometers, seeing how their behavior 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", two time Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award winner 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. "Peter is wonderfully adept at using compelling narratives to examine human behavior. 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," Emmy Award winning producer Joni Levin notes. 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 centers around a young Polish outdoorsman, Janusz, whose keen survival skills will make him the fugitives’ de facto leader. Jim Sturgess ("Across the Universe") was cast as Janusz. "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. 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." Janusz’s accomplices include a taciturn American structural engineer, Mr Smith, and a violently unpredictable Russian, Valka. Valka belongs to a vicious stratum of convicted street criminals, 'Urki', who are allowed to run the Gulags and intimidate the 'political' inmates. 2009 Golden Globe winner Colin Farrell ("In Bruges") who plays Valka, revealed: "The Gulag was a hierarchical society ruled by fear and intimidation. 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." And his character? "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." 1999 Golden Globe winner Ed Harris ("The Truman Show") plays the enigmatic and quiet man, Mr Smith. He'd traveled to Russia with his son to work on Moscow’s metro system. Arrested in the night, he was sent to Siberia. "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." In fact, some seven thousand Americans disappeared in the Gulags. Enemies of the people” were typically sentenced to 10 to 25 years. The unfortunate Russian thespian Khabarov is given ten years for "elevating the status of the old nobility" in a film role, anecdotally based on true accounts. "I’ve had better notices," Khabarov quips to new arrival Janusz, whom he immediately befriends and recruits as a potential participant in a breakout attempt. "Khabarov harbors grand notions of escape, and entices Janusz into exploring the possibility, more so to feed off his energy and youthfulness than to entertain any real hope of getting out," says Strong, who will next be seen in "The Guard" with Brenden Gleeson. "It’s a fantasy he indulges in to distract from the unrelenting misery and hopelessness of his situation." Remote. Sizzling in summer, ferociously cold in winter. Prisoners had to build their own shelters and live on about one thousand two hundred calories a day, says Executive Producer Keith Clarke, who co-wrote the films screenplay with Weir. If they fulfilled their grueling work quota. Life expectancy: one year. The choice: perish among comrades in the Gulag or perish alone outside it. "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," says Weir. "That bounty", says Clarke, "equaled the year’s wages of a typical village resident. Often, all that was required as 'proof' of capture to claim a reward was a hand or foot." Along with Janusz, Valka and Mr Smith, the group includes: Poles Tamasz and Kazik, the Latvian Voss and, a cynically humorous Yugoslav, Zoran. Played by 2003 & '08 Romanian Union of Filmmakers Best Actor Award winner Dragos Bucur, Zoran, an accountant by trade, has seemingly "the least likely chance of making it, because he’s not a physically strong man. However, he’s been able to maintain a sense of humor as a survival tool. And he knows how to adapt. His comrades have greater reasons for getting home, reasons beyond themselves, but Zoran has decided he will try to survive for that reason alone. Just to survive." Voss, a Latvian priest before the war and a physically large man, joins the group out of a sense of loyalty and an awareness of his very low probability of making it in the camp. 2007 Guldbagge Best Actor Award winner Gustaf Skarsgård ("Kidz in da Hood"), who was cast for the role explains: "Big people tended to die first because they require more calories. But beyond that, Voss is inclined to take care of people." Seventeen year old and green behind the ears, Kazik is the youngest of the group. Tamasz has artistic talents that gained him status in the camp. His status has been gained through his portraits of voluptuous nude women. Saoirse Roman, who was cast as Irena, had just returned to Ireland from shooting Peter Jackson’s "The Lovely Bones" in New Zealand, when Weir flew from London to Dublin to meet her. "I loved him straight away, and we got on really well. I noticed he is very detail oriented, and isn’t careless with anything. I was excited about the physical challenges of the part, and got busy learning a Polish accent, which is lovely." Sturgess, Potocean, Urzendowsky and Bucur also trained for Polish accents, while Skarsgård learned some Latvian and Ed Harris and Colin Farrell studied Russian. The latter practiced the dialect in Los Angeles with Judy Dickerson and the language itself with a Russian-speaking Bulgarian actor. In addition to learning various dialects, the actors were given scholastic homework, and knew going in that three time BAFTA winner Weir expected them to become immersed in the subject matter. Books and videos about the Gulags, the purges and personal survivor stories were distributed. Sturgess (George Boleyn in "The Other Boleyn Girl") recalls: "Every day there would be new stacks of material coming in. I read them all, and wanted more. There was so much about this period I didn’t know. I was kind of a slacker in school." Education about the Gulags was step one. Step two was being introduced to survival skills and learning what kind of toll a trek across four thousand five hundred miles would impart. The instructor, Cyril Delafosse-Guiramand, is the film’s technical advisor and an avid adventurer. He had undertaken the same journey detailed in "The Long Walk". He also organized a camping trip in the chilly winter air, during which he gave cast members individual survival lessons pertaining to the specific skills their character would need to demonstrate: be it skinning animals, setting traps, creating makeshift shelters or starting fires. He also created a small guidebook to aid their lessons. Weir's fastidious research and painstaking pursuit of realism extended to the Gulag set being constructed at Boyana Studios in Bulgaria. 1983 AFI Award winning Production designer John Stoddart ("Careful, He Might Hear You"), was lured out of retirement to work on the project. He tinkered with various miniatures over a period of time to come up with a satisfactory layout model. "I started with a rigid grid system, which Peter didn’t like because it was too similar to a German concentration camp." His task was made a little easier because Weir, "shared some additional research that revealed the Soviet Gulags had a much more haphazard design." Bulgaria, with its ample forests, mountains, plains, and large stage facilities in Sofia, became an attractive option when it came to shooting the film. Location Manager Michael Meehan ("The Perfect Storm") explained: "The geography of Bulgaria is sufficient to cheat for Siberia, the Russian steppe, northern Mongolia and even Tibet." The winding path to production was, in itself, a difficult and determined journey. The film’s core inspiration, Slavomir Rawicz’s "The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom", published in 1956, and since translated into thirty languages, was originally optioned by the late Laurence Harvey who starred with Frank Sinatra in the 1962 film, "The Manchurian Candidate", which was was once set up at Warner Bros as a vehicle for the late Oscar ® winner Burt Lancaster ("Elmer Gantry", 1961). So, is it a true story or not? "Twenty million people passed through the Gulags. This is the fictional account of seven of them, inspired by actual events," says Weir. "The Long Walk remains a great adventure story," says Clarke. "It’s an enthralling testament that brilliantly illuminates the ordeals suffered by millions of men and women." What's It All About?

It's 1940. An officer in the Polish cavalry, which was fighting the Nazis, Janusz is one of thousands of Polish solders 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, extracted under torture, has sealed his fate. He, along with others is sent to a Siberian Gulag, where conditions are harsh, life is cheap and only the hardiest or the most cunning survive. Janusz believes it is possible to escape 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. With a blizzard as cover, he and six prisoners will escape and begin a trek to freedom: a journey of over four thousand miles.

The Verdict "Those familiar with the term, 'Walk a mile in my shoes' will fully appreciate the enormity of the journey undertaken by the characters in "The Way Back", Peter Weirs first film since his 2003 epic, "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World". Despite arguements over the authenticity of Slavomir Rawicz’s 1956 book "The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom", Weir has, in his own inimitable way, put together an enthralling tale many will find most gripping. It is however, not a film for the impatient. Thanks to generous and emotive performances by a solid and highly credentialed cast, stunning vistas and huge panoramas, "The Way Back" is a rewarding journey worth undertaking. Despite the harrowing aspects and the set-backs that beset the escapees, you hope and pray that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that those who face the extreme elements will succeed and find freedom. Despite the lack of publicity this is worth seeing. 3 1/2 STARS." Who Is Playing Who?

Jim Sturgess Mark Strong Dragos Bucur Colin Farrell Ed Harris Alexandru Potocean Saoirse Ronan Gustaf Skarsgård Zahary Baharov Sally Edwards Igor Gnezdilov Dejan Angelov Stanislav Pishtalov Mariy Grigorov Nikolay Stanoev

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Janusz Khabarov Zoran Valka Mr Smith Tomasz Irena Voss Interrogator Janusz's Wife (1939) Bohdan Andrei Commandant Lazar Yuri

The Production Team Directed by Peter Weir Screenplay Keith R. Clarke & Peter Weir Inspired by the Slavomir Rawicz novel "The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom" Produced by Duncan Henderson/Joni Levin/Nigel Sinclair/Peter Weir Original Music by Burkhard von Dallwitz Cinematography by Russell Boyd Film Editing by Lee Smith Casting by Lina Todd Production Design by John Stoddart Art Direction by Kes Bonnet Costume Design by Wendy Stites Run Time 133 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2011 - Roadshow Films - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2011 - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian & International Copyright, Trademark Laws & Intellectual Property Rights.