The Way Back (a movie and a lesson of life)

Holiday..Holiday.... hohohoho..After a week i was fully working (including Saturday and Sunday). Finally I got the holiday. Deciding to have beautiful holiday, I watched the movie that I think it will be a great movie. I invited my friend to accompany me (well actually not inviting directly, he had the same intention to watch the movie). So, I went to FX and met friend there. After more than two hours watching that movie, I was imp
ressed. I dont have words for this movie just see below review that I quoted from other siteweb


*****


For his first film in seven years, Peter Weir has chosen to tell an epic tale with a panoramic sweep, in the manner of David Lean. It is "inspired" by a true story, which may unfortunately have been itself merely "inspired" by what its author claims to be the truth. Its veracity was in question even before it was put through the movie mill. This source material was a bestseller by the Polish army lieutenant Slavomir Rawicz, who was imprisoned by the Soviets after their invasion of 1939, accused of spying and sent to the Siberian gulag. In his book, he claimed that with a group of other prisoners he pulled off a daring escape during a blizzard in 1941; against incredible odds, and fired by an overwhelming need to survive, this group reportedly managed the astonishing feat of trekking thousands of miles to safety in British India. Since publication, his account has been disputed. There are suggestions that it is entirely fictional, or that Rawicz appropriated and conflated other people's apocryphal tales. Weir has reportedly added more background material with extended research and survivor interviews of his own.

1. The Way Back
2. Production year: 2010
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 133 mins
6. Directors: Peter Weir
7. Cast: Alexandru Potocean, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Gustaf Skarsgard, Jim Sturgess, Mark Strong, Saoirse Ronan, Sebastian Urzendowsky
8. More on this film

Of course, if it simply didn't happen at all, to anyone, then readers and movie audiences are entitled to ask what value the story has – except, conceivably, as an image for humanity's long, persistent slog away from the prison of Soviet tyranny. This, in fact, is the idea suggested in one late sequence: a historical newsreel montage showing the Poles' postwar communist rule, the Hungarian uprising, the Solidarity trade union, the fall of the Berlin Wall etc, all with a pair of trudging boots at the top of the frame. However, even if disbelieved in the literal sense, The Way Back is still an engaging, old-fashioned piece of storytelling.
At its centre is Janusz, played earnestly though also sometimes with a slightly flavourless efficiency, by the 29-year-old British actor Jim Sturgess; he is a Pole whose young wife is tortured by the Soviets into denouncing him as a spy. Janusz is sent to the Siberian gulag for 20 years, a terrifying place where the inmates are told by the commander that it is not the barbed wire, guards and dogs that make up their prison but the vast and forbidding landscape itself. (Weir may be alluding here to a very similar speech from the Japanese camp commandant at the beginning of Lean's Bridge on the River Kwai.)
Here, Janusz meets mercurial former actor Khabarov (Mark Strong) whose tall tales of escape inspire him to make a break. Among his group are an enigmatic American, known only as "Mr Smith", played by Ed Harris as a grizzled cynic; Zoran, played by Romanian actor Dragos Bucur; enigmatic Irena, played by Saoirse Ronan, who joins them on the road, and a gangster called Valka, played by Colin Farrell – a professional criminal who joins the escape party purely to get away from other mobsters inside who want to kill him over gambling debts. Valka is apparently set up to be the heart-of-gold lowlife who is surely destined to redeem himself by taking one for the team just before the final credits. In fact, that isn't exactly what happens, and, a little disconcertingly, Valka turns out to have a sentimental regard for Stalin. Messy, contradictory details like this, paradoxically, argue for the story's reality.
There is something surreal in seeing the group, in long-shot, inching like insects through the snowy wastes of Siberia, or the rippling vastness of the Gobi desert, tormented by what may or may not be mirages of oases – another pleasingly old-fashioned touch. In the gulag, one finds he can survive through his knack for storytelling: he starts reciting what he remembers of Stevenson's Treasure Island, and a saucer-eyed crowd of murderous tough guys are held spellbound, promising pieces of bread if he can continue. Another valuable commodity inside is the ability to make pornographic drawings, which become currency like cigarettes. Later, when the artist makes a sketch of one of his haggard fellow escapers, the subject looks at his portrait and wonderingly says that it looks just like his father. Again, a nice touch.
The Way Back is a robustly made picture, heartfelt, well executed with an exhilarating sense of reach and narrative ambition. Where it falls down is a lack of personal intensity to match the spectacle. There is nothing that interesting to discover about Janusz, and nothing that interesting for him to discover about himself; even the secrets disclosed about the other escapers don't have much of an impact on the group dynamic. Well, this isn't an overwhelming problem. Weir has put together a good film – oddly, though, considering its scale, it feels like a rather small one.

***
Think that review represents my review hehehe (kinda lazy to write it too detail)..
Oya this film has a point. It told few of moral of story. I mean there were some lessons that I got.
The setting of the movie is about from Siberia to India. It is not just a journey about a survivors, but it is beyond on it. The survivors had a reason why they finally took that risk. One of the reason was "We may die if we take this journey but at least we die in freedom". One more, Janusz (one of the cast) did the astonished journey for his beloved wife. To meet her wife in Poland where communism ruled and he couldn't  meet her since he is the prisoner of communist. So he (and friends) walks through the mountains, forest, desert, river, winter, spring, autumn and other unpredictable place and weather. He just walked for his wife, not for himself until finally he met her.

Actually the message quite similar with friend's story. He decided to quit his job for particular reason. He often did the same thing and had the same problems whenever he got a job. When he asked me why, i answered it with a question to him. "Do you have any obligation to pay the parent's bill?" He said no. For me, having that kind of bill will automatically bring you to a word called 'Responsibility'. That responsibility will drive you to think that you have to settle those bills every month. If you dont work and then you dont have cash. My point is  reconsider more and more to finally to decide to quit . Try to work not for yourself but work for your beloved one. You will have huge tasks to at lease ease them from daily basis charge.