Cinematical has posted their review of Peter Weir’s The Way Back which premiered last night at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.  Below is an excerpt from the review:

The Way Back rockets forward with the urgency and authenticity of real life. It begins in Soviet-occupied Poland, as a military officer named Janusz (the film’s stand-in for Rawicz, played by the young English actor Jim Sturgess) is interrogated and then sent to Siberia after his wife is tortured into incriminating him. One of the year’s most powerful scenes, this stunner of an opening telegraphs the film’s merciless, unflinching approach. There’s no physical violence on the screen, but Weir punches us in the gut simply by training his camera on Janusz’s face as his eyes fill with fear, which turns to horror and then anger.

Hollywood Elsewhere reader, Terry Woods has this review of the film:

“A hugely harrowing experience. The first half is better than the second half, which covers more of the journey the escaped prisoners make, but the film is never less than totally absorbing. I’ll go so far as to say the first half is the best work that Weir has ever done in my opinion, and the second half is still better than most Hollywood product churned out today.  Jim Sturgess is excellent here.  I haven’t been a huge fan before but there’s a scene near the beginning where Sturgess doesn’t utter a word but says everything with his eyes — it took my breath away.  And the cinematography is award-worthy.

And from The New York Times comes this blog entry in Arts Beat about The Way Back:

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 weighs in with 4 Stars for The Way Back describing the film as “a profoundly moving work of art from a modern master.” Here’s an excerpt from the review:

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.

The film is unconventional in its depiction of a long march by Siberian Gulag escapees out of Communist Russia. But rather than becoming repetitive or aimless, the film’s series of vignettes depicting the mundane particulars of survival (be it physical or psychological) is incredibly moving and consistently engaging.

Sturgess is a wonderful anchor for the viewer throughout, but it’s probably the performances from Ed Harris and, especially, Colin Farrell that stand out the most. Nevertheless, this is a true ensemble piece very much concerned with the necessity of togetherness to pull through the worst and Weir, along with a below-the-line crew worthy of love letters, pulls it off without a hitch.

Special thanks to forum members, Momoko and Izzy for sharing these reviews.