Recensioni de* critic*

Essentially a tale of the indomitable human will to survive, The Way Back is more notable for its mind-bending visual depiction of this insane trek (the film was shot on location in Pakistan, Morocco, and Bulgaria) than anything it has to say about either Stalin's brutality or the human spirit (surprise! it's uncrushable!)... Ultimately, however, The Way Back fails to connect on the all-important visceral, emotional level.

Though talking about the movie inevitably leads to a description of its inspirational qualities, there is nothing corny or effortful or remotely Hallmark-like about anything in "The Way Back." Weir instills emotion in the audience, not by showing emotion, but by showing action and by holding emotion in check.

[T]he overall metaphor Weir was aiming for — this idea of enemies so powerful and a war so menacing and confusingly big that no place seems safe except a place absurdly far away — comes through clearly and stays with you.

By staking a claim on the historical record, Mr. Weir needlessly burdens his story, investing it with an expectation of brute truth that this overly temperate film doesn’t want to meet. Certainly if this were framed as fiction, it might be easier to buy Mr. Farrell as a Russian gangster, or forgive the crudely obvious commercial rationale of his casting.

Weir told the BBC that he considers The Way Back “essentially a fiction film”; the story of prisoners walking from Siberia to India certainly appears to be too melodramatic to be true, but in the end, it doesn’t particularly matter. Well-acted and artfully (though conventionally) made, The Way Back tells a compelling story, regardless of whether it’s based on truth or a fabrication.

[T]he weakness of Peter Weir‘s film, which is nobly staged and has breathtaking cinematography but frankly, [is] not enough of a story in the vulgar populist sense. Desperation and exhaustion make it difficult for the trekkers to work up much in the way of characters or conflicts, and while that no doubt spares us many cliches, we are left during their long walk with too much of a muchness.

The Way Back has no shortage of scenic splendor. What it lacks is drama. As undifferentiated as the escapees are, the movie is relatively uninvolving until they are joined by a gangly Polish girl (Saoirse Ronan, previously victimized in The Lovely Bones), also on the lam. Her presence precipitates the flowering of backstories and personalities, most successfully in the case of Ed Harris’s crafty, lone-wolf American.

The film, the first from director Peter Weir since “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” in 2003... is by turns rigorously spare, bracingly direct and then disconcertingly inclined toward an ill-fitting sentimentality.

To be sure, this is a story about survival, and as such physical decay and boredom are more appropriate to the setting than false glamour, but with the exception of the surrounding wilderness, there’s little that’s worth the viewer’s attention here. The Way Back is a decent landscape picture overburdened by the demands of narrative.

Weir's The Way Back is a riveting film, bracketed by monochrome newsreel material... The dialogue is rarely more than functional and occasionally sententious, the lapses into sentimentality are rare... Magnificently photographed by Russell Boyd on locations in Bulgaria, Morocco and India, the terrain is awesome, yet never picturesque. And the desert is not romanticised as it often is in Lawrence of Arabia and The English Patient.

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... 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.

By the end, it doesn’t matter whether or not the film is true. Weir has taken us on a visceral journey that, for the most part, feels true. A journey that feels awful and heroic and unfathomable – and one you’ll want to watch again.