The Way Back

OPENING: 1/21/2011

STUDIO: Exclusive Films

RUN TIME: 133m

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Their escape was just the beginning

Opening Statement
From long time established director Peter Weir comes The Way Back, the story of gulag escapees whose goal is to walk to freedom. While this film isn’t as well constructed as some of Weir’s other works (e.g. Witness, The Truman Show), The Way Back holds it own in the escape-from-jail genre of films. The film could have been tighter and even better written at times, but still manages to entertain to the end.

Facts of the Case
Polish resident Janusz is accused of spying against the communist Soviet Union and Stalin’s regime. After refusing to sign a confession, he is sent to a Soviet labor camp where he is to serve the next twenty years of his life. Janusz quickly learns that no man can survive twenty years in such a camp and immediately befriends other inmates with a plan to escape. During the most furious of winter storms, a group of seven break free and head into the mountains, thus beginning the harrowing 4,000 mile journey from Siberia to India.

The Evidence
Unlike the classic The Great Escape, a film which focuses more on the actual escape from a WWII prison camp, The Way Back, on the other hand, spends little time in the prison and spends the great majority of the film on the journey. The amount of time spent in the camp is simply enough to introduce characters and show the viewers ample reason why the convicted wish to escape. The prisoners sleep several to a bunk, get very little food, and work in the most extreme conditions during a harsh Siberian winter. Those who resist working in the outdoor climates are subject to the mines, which is a hell with dangers of its own. The main character, Janusz, can see quite clearly that life inside the gulag is no life at all. With inmates dying right and left, Janusz must find a way out if he is to survive to see his wife again.

“Nature is your jailer and she is without mercy.”

These words, spoken by the Soviet officer greeting the new inmates, are a verbal warning should they even try to escape, Mother Nature will undoubtedly take each of them down. With literally hundreds of miles of forest in every direction, the survival rate for escapees is zero. Weir does a masterful job of showing the brutality of winter in Siberia. Food is almost nonexistent and every day brings new challenges as the inmates walk in the same direction, hoping to reach some sort of freedom. Weir brilliantly juxtaposes the beauty of the untouched forest against the relentless winter conditions. Overhead camera shots give the forest a feeling of claustrophobia, with trees spaced only feet apart for miles in any direction. The camera might linger over a hill only to see a seemingly endless range of mountains in the distance.

After the survivors reach the southern tip of the Siberian wilderness, the landscape changes considerably and within a relatively short distance they find themselves on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The desert brings new challenges to the remaining group and death quickly becomes the more pleasurable alternative to those whose hope has completely diminished. With countless, enormous sand dunes rivaling that of Tatooine, the escapees walk day after day, night after night, with little to drink and even less to eat. Weir spends half of the film in the desert, and although we better understand this excruciatingly arduous part of the journey for the travelers, I found this to be where the film itself began to drag. At some point, the long distance shots of people walking across the desert became tedious and the film could have benefited from more footage showing the toll that the desert takes on the human body. This is touched on briefly, but more of this would alleviate the need for so many walking shots. During one of these walking shots, a glaring continuity error fills the screen, catching the attention of both my wife and me. Thankfully, the picture eventually reaches its climax and ties itself up rather quickly, almost too quickly, with survivors immediately disappearing from the story simply to focus on Janusz’ original plight.

A few choices in the screenplay could have used better explanation; one scene which struck me as rather sloppy involved the group as they walked along the edge of Baikal Lake. For some unclear reason, the group decides that they must swim across a section of the lake, which is visibly frozen in parts. Weir never established why the group must swim across the near freezing water instead of walking around the lake as they had been doing. In fact, the distance they do maneuver across is quite short, so not going around this section of the lake seems highly illogical on the part of the characters. Another unexplained goal is why the journeymen insist on getting to India, instead of hopping on the Trans-Siberian railroad heading east. Possibly, the railway is too heavily patrolled by invading forces, but that is never explained and with the great distances they have already hiked, hitching a ride on a train, even if for fifty miles, would prove to be quite a relief.

The Way Back is loosely based on The Long Walk, a book by Slawomir Rawicz chronicling his 4,000 mile walk after escaping prison. This story, although selling a half a million copies, has since been debunked on several levels and is questioned as to its truthfulness in storytelling. While stretching the truth has very often provided for great storytelling, that doesn’t excuse Weir from making the film as air-tight as possible.

Closing Statement
In the end, The Way Back is an entertaining film, but not as well constructed as it could have been. The long 132 minute running time becomes quite evident in the second half and with a tighter section in the desert, it might have been more satisfying. Still, Peter Weir has a knack for photographing the beauty in nature’s many landscapes, even when those same landscapes bring death to those who can’t overcome its indifference toward human life.

The Verdict

6/10

Appaloosa

OPENING: 10/03/2008

STUDIO: Warner Bros.

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

The Charge
Feelings get you killed.

Opening Statement
Every time a new western comes around, there is much discussion about the fact that there aren’t many new westerns these days. That’s kind of a sad thing, but there is one benefit: when someone actually does take the time to make a western, they usually care enough about the film to make it count. We may not have a great quantity of westerns from the past couple of decades, but there’s a pretty high ratio of quality. I’m pleased to report that actor/director Ed Harris has now given us yet another winner, the very appealing Appaloosa.

Facts of the Case
Harris and Viggo Mortensen play two hired gunmen who have made a living out of cleaning up dirty towns. The town of Appaloosa looks like the exact same sort of thing they’ve dealt with time and time again in the past. It’s being controlled by a violent rancher (played by Jeremy Irons), and the local government officials are keen to regain power. They hire Harris to take over as the new City Marshall, with Mortensen serving as deputy. It’s the classic western set-up: a couple of good guys need to take on the villain and his giant posse. Of course, there’s a woman (Renee Zellweger) thrown into the mix, because what is a western without a little romance?

The Evidence
This has led many critics to refer to Appaloosa as a very traditional old-fashioned western. It may seem so on the surface, but it is actually a whole lot more. Harris is a very smart man, and it shows here. He preserves the look and feel of vintage Hollywood westerns, and creates a movie that seems nostalgic in many ways. But take a closer look at the movie. At every single turn, Harris is quietly undermining stereotypes, altering our perceptions of seemingly familiar characters, and creating a surprisingly original story. At no point in this film was I able to confidently predict what might happen next. I can’t remember the last western I saw where I felt like that.

Let us consider the character played by Renee Zellweger. She is not a prostitute, and she is not a school teacher (the only two professions most female characters in westerns are permitted to have). She is a musician, playing the piano and organ in churches and saloons for a living. That is just the first surprise. There is a second, and then a third, and perhaps a fourth, depending on how trusting you are a person. Then consider the plot surrounding Jeremy Irons. Irons commits a cold-blooded murder at the beginning of the film, and all of his men witness this. One of the men decides that he would like to testify against his boss, and comes to Harris and Mortensen with his story. As he does this within the film’s half-hour, we think we know what is going to happen to this poor sap. We are wrong. The sort of thing that never happens in a film like this actually happens, and I was delighted. I was genuinely surprised, and I was happy to finally be viewing a film that I could not stay a step ahead of. That is not a compliment I am paying myself, but rather a criticism of the formulaic nature of most modern films (particularly genre efforts).

My praise does not stop there. A surprising plot is only one of the film’s attributes. The film is simply gorgeous on a technical level, capturing a beautiful slice of the American west that is both realistic and romanticized. Harris knows his stuff behind the camera. Even though this film bears little relation Pollock, his previous film, his skills as a director are just as evident. He handles the action scenes very well, and these are yet another area in which the film surprised me. Most movie shootouts involving a lot of people seem to last forever. This film has a great big shootout that lasts a grand total of ten seconds. “That was fast,” Mortensen marvels. “Everyone knew how to shoot,” Harris observes. Of course they did. We just didn’t expect them to, since this is a movie, and movies tend to require a lot of wasted bullets.

Of all the many qualities here, perhaps none of them would matter without the success of the core relationship at the center of the film. Harris and Mortensen create two memorable and unique characters that moved me a great deal. Harris is a man’s man, the kind of no-nonsense fellow that would be played by John Wayne or Clint Eastwood in their prime. However, there is so much more to this guy. His feelings are easily wounded, and he does not recover quickly from insults (particularly those delivered by friends). He feels slightly inadequate, and is constantly working towards trying to expand his vocabulary, perhaps in search of some words elegant enough to express the feelings of his soul. Harris has scenes here that in the film’s second half that can genuinely be called “beautiful”, but I dare not describe them beyond that for fear of spoiling things. His excellent performance is complimented nicely by Mortensen, who plays a character that is a little kinder, a little more level-headed, and a little more emotionally stable. Harris is the noble leader of the duo, but Mortensen is the wiser of the two. However, they are both good men, honest men, and sincere men. It can be difficult to make goodness compelling, but both succeed with flying colors here. Meanwhile, Zellweger seems right at home in this material, and Irons plays a villain as effectively as you would expect an actor of his caliber to. There’s also a fine small turn from Timothy Spall, who is as good as anyone at wringing his hands and fidgeting worriedly.

Closing Statement
Go see Appaloosa. This film keeps everything that I love about traditional westerns, and it gently improves upon everything else with wisdom and subtlety. It is also a film that has a profound level of compassion for and understanding of its characters. Ed Harris has made one of the year’s best films, and has done so with such modesty that many may not recognize just how good it is. Appaloosa is a film to be treasured.

The Verdict

10/10