FFWD REW

Of fact and fiction

Weir’s latest explores escape from Siberia

In a career that’s spanned over four decades Australian director Peter Weir has had his share of unexpected obstacles. Filming for 1982’s The Year of Living Dangerously lived up to its title with the production relocating to Australia from the Philippines partway through after he received death threats for its perceived anti-Islamic tilt. A few years later he had to shift his set again after uncovering a Mayan ruin in Belize while making The Mosquito Coast . And as Weir later learned he could have faced some especially nasty surprises in Morocco a stand-in for the Gobi Desert in his latest film The Way Back.

“I wasn’t expecting that we’d have to have the set in the desert swept every morning and after lunch by a man in charge of removing scorpions and snakes” he says adding that when he first saw the man at work he wondered: “What’s he doing with a plastic bottle and a stick?”

The film Weir’s first in more than seven years bills itself as “Inspired by Real Events” but owes more to inspiration than reality. It’s adapted from The Long Walk Polish army officer Slavomir Rawicz’s popular but suspect account of his supposed escape from a Siberian gulag during the Second World War and subsequent flight to India. Another Pole Witold Glinski said in 2009 that Rawicz had appropriated a journey he actually undertook a claim many people — including Weir — are skeptical of.

“It’s curious he took this long to come forward about his story” he says. “He’s got no evidence to support it. But for me I wasn’t doing a biography film. I was basing it as they say on true events rather than true people. It’s not a documentary.”

The film’s main character is Janusz (Jim Sturgess) a young Pole arrested for alleged anti-Soviet activities whose fate is sealed by false testimony coerced from his wife. Sent to Siberia he meets and plots an escape with a mysterious American detainee (Ed Harris) and an opportunistic Russian thief (Colin Farrell). Along with a few other prisoners the trio eventually break free from the gulag but face the harsh reality that as a guard had warned “Nature is your jailer.”

While Siberia was actually played by Bulgaria in the film the stand-in certainly captures the requisite barren bleakness. Weir appreciates the sense Bulgaria and Morocco gave his cast of the conditions the escapees would’ve faced.

“It helped the actors actually” he says. “For the most part they’re young so they’re hardy. Yes they sweltered and they shivered but it also gave them an understanding of what these people had been through.”

From the soldiers who leave Australia to fight in the First World War-era in Gallipoli to the voyage of a British warship in Master and Commander many of Weir’s past films have also focused on journeys. It’s a theme he attributes to personal experience.

“When I was a young man I left Australia and went to England” he says. “You went then by ship that was the cheapest way. That five-week voyage I think changed my life. It probably went somewhere deep that idea of a journey being something that changes you.”

But even after helming a dozen films and earning six Oscar nominations Weir displays the cautious optimism of a rookie in discussing The Way Back’s prospects. He’s happy with the response from preview audiences but when asked at the interview’s end if he has anything else to say it’s clear he’s taking nothing for granted.

“I’d like to wish myself good luck” he says with a laugh. “You always need that when you open a movie. I hope the public like myself are always looking for a good film and good drama.”

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