The Way Back (Peter Weir, 2010)
Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 1:50 am
While greatly looking forward to the rare treat of a new Peter Weir film, I was somewhat concerned by the fact that nobody seemed to be interested in distributing it. It has supposedly been in the can for several months, has marketable names in the cast, and a guy that has been nominated for Best Director four times. It sounds like my fears were probably mostly unfounded. The "problem," as it were, is that Weir and his film are thought of as old-fashioned. This piece by Pete Hammond details Weir's effort to get the film to the marketplace.
The Way Back has now been picked up for distribution by Newmarket, whose parent company also financed it. It debuted at Telluride last night to positive notices, and will likely get an Oscar-qualifying run in late December before going wide in January.[Weir] says, “One [studio exec] said, ‘We aren’t in that kind of business anymore.’ I thought what kind of business? Show business?” He believes there is no way he could have gotten his last film, Master and Commander made now, just seven years later. “We just squeaked in on that one. The gate is now closed.” Weir got to the point where he became genuinely worried it might go directly to DVD, a thought that sends shivers down his spine but is a reality for major directors now working in the not-so-brave new indie environment.
There was talk last spring that the film would be in the Cannes Film Festival in May -- and Weir confirms it could have been. “It was ready for Cannes. But the talk was what is the market, especially for a drama which is an extremely chancy genre now. Few are offered, few succeed. It’s a big conversation going on in the world of film. Is audience taste changing? It seems to have fallen out of fashion. I think the fantasy film has usurped this kind of adventure.”
A.O. Scott, [i]New York Times[/i] wrote:Mr. Weir’s style is stately, almost classical, and the astonishing story he has to tell in the new movie — about a group of men who escaped from a Soviet Labor camp in 1941 and walked from Siberia to India — has an old-fashioned gravity and grandeur. There are fine performances from Ed Harris, Sioarse Ronan and Jim Sturgess as Januzs, the Polish prisoner who leads the trek toward freedom, and breathtaking images of tundra, desert forest and grassland.
In Contention wrote:This kind of thing obviously doesn’t lend itself to studio interest, especially in a day and age when those at the top are frequently number crunchers and business types lacking the cinema knowledge (and appreciation) base of their predecessors. As such, a film like “The Way Back” waited forever for a company to bite, and now that I’ve seen it, I’m convinced it’s an embarrassment and a blight on many records that the film and Weir have been left out in the cold, because this is quietly profound, epic, bold filmmaking at its very best. (4 stars)
Cinematical wrote:The Way Back brings a lot of talent and a tremendous amount of craft to a movie that will be too painful for most people to endure. There is nothing reassuring about it; no triumph-of-the-human-spirit comfort. The story of these men is "inspiring," but only in the grimmest possible way. The film suggests that it's always darkest just before the dawn – if the dawn comes at all.