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The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.

Writers: Keith R. Clarke (screenplay), Slavomir Rawicz (novel).

Stars: Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Dragos Bucur, Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong.

Amazing. Like these people, my grandfather was deported to Siberia to work as a lumberjack (he was a pharmacist) in World War 2. The opportunity to view his situation was compelling at the outset. It so happens that the director is fabulous. Peter Weir (“Australian New Wave”) directed films such as, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Truman Show (1998), Dead Poets Society (1989) and Gallipoli (1981).

Plot: The true story of Siberian gulag (The Gulag was a Soviet penal labour camp) escapees who walk 4000 miles overland to freedom in India.

This film had such an authentic feel to it. The freezing, bitter cold of Siberia to the arid heat of a dessert…all extremes were so well done. The filth, hunger, thirst were absolutely believable. The characters had excellent accents and they sometimes spoke Russian and Polish.

This film was satisfying top to bottom. I cannot think of one element that was weak. It is based on a true story and it was well researched and depicted. A handful of European prisoners escape the gulag and set off on a 4,000 mile journey on foot through southern Siberia and the whole of Mongolia to escape terror and the Communist regime.

Peter Weir said, “I made everything of any significance in dialogue or the way the characters are something that I could source back … I think deciding to fictionalize, inspired by the book, I then became obsessed with making everything truthful as much as I could.” (http://screencrave.com/2011-01-19/interview-director-peter-weir-talks-the-way-back/)

The acting was so good. Colin Farrell plays a tattooed Russian criminal in the gulag who surprisingly (not) smokes like a chimney. (Trivia: When I lived in Toronto I used to attend The Toronto International Film Festival. Before he was famous I saw Colin Farrell smoking outside in the back of a cinema. I swear.) He is extremely convincing.

Ed Harris “portrays Mr. Smith, a mysterious loner American ex-patriot toiling away in the Stalinist Siberian gulag.

Harris would head up to another piece of property he owned near his home every day with a pickax and just hack away at the ground. “It’s just bare earth but it’s really hard,” he says. “I’d just go up there and do manual labor for a few hours and get some strength and calluses. I wasn’t achieving anything other than clearing out an area that I wasn’t going to do anything with anyway. It was totally just like, you’ve got to do this. You’re in a gulag and you’ve got to go work or they’re going to kill you.” (http://incontention.com/2010/12/07/interview-the-way-back-actor-ed-harris/)

He played his role like he lived through this.

Sturgess portrays a character based on Sławomir Rawicz, a young Polish officer who escaped from a Russian gulag. He said, “there was no acting required when you’re freezing cold and Peter Weir’s going, ‘Okay, you’ve got to be freezing cold.” (http://movies.about.com/od/thewayback/a/Jim-Sturgess-Way-Back-Interview.htm)

Jim Sturgess was the main character and leader here. It would be an understatement to say he was good.

“If the Lord of the Rings trilogy is three films of people walking, The Way Back is its super-serious stylistic twin. It is effectively 4000 miles of plodding drama, as the characters progress from snowy tundra to frosty forests, to breathless swamp, to vast, silky desert, finally ending up at the Himalayas two hours later. Along the way, they brave the elements, slowly starve, learn a little about each other and themselves, and in the process catch a glimpse at some profound truth about humanity.” (http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/706612/the_way_back_review.html)

I’m exhausted just thinking about this great film.

Romy Shiller is a pop culture critic and holds a PhD in Drama from the University of Toronto. Her academic areas of concentration include film, gender performance, camp and critical thought. She lives in Montreal where she continues her writing. All books are available online.