BEFORE: We're already more than halfway through January, and I've resisted all urges to tear apart my chain for February and March to try to rebuild them better - I think I'll stay the course as long as I can. I've worked out a way to get from the end of the Sherlock Holmes movies to my two Easter movies, which involves buying only 1 film from iTunes to bridge the gap. All things considered, that's not bad. I'll have to double-up on some of the Basil Rathbone Holmes films to do it, but I can work with that, I think most of them are not very long.
Looking ahead, 2018 is going to be a bit of an odd year because Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day are going to coincide, and I can't remember that ever happening before. This also means that Easter and April Fool's Day are going to be the same day, which I can't recall ever happening either. That's got to be a sign of the apocalypse or something. (Part of me thinks that Easter should always coincide with April Fool's, if not on the calendar then at least in spirit, but that's a personal opinion.) Good luck to you if you have to program a movie, however, that manages to fulfill two holidays at once - it can't be done.
I've also got an eye looking ahead to TCM's annual "30 Days of Oscar" programming, which kicks off on February 1. What's going to be the theme this year, the method in which they'll be organizing their films? I don't think there's been a formal announcement yet, but after peeking at their schedule for Feb. 1, I saw a wide variety of films that didn't seem to have anything in common - "Robin and the 7 Hoods", "Swing Time", "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Born Free"? Ah, but that last one gives it away, "Born Free" won an Oscar for Best Original Song, and "Swing Time" won in the same category for "The Way You Look Tonight", so it looks like they'll be organizing by award category this year, while it may not be as fun for me as linking by shared actor, I can work with that. Once they print the full month schedule I'll go through it and see if there's anything I haven't seen that I'll want to pick up - a bit unlikely at this point.
Ed Harris carries over from "Appaloosa", and I'm back on Netflix tonight, and then I don't think I need to watch anything on Netflix until February 9, so I can start making some progress on my watchlist again, that is to say the physical, non-streaming DVDs already in my collection. But films are still coming in via cable and being added to my list almost as quickly as I'm removing films from the other end, so progress is still going to be very slow for a while.
THE PLOT: Siberian gulag escapees travel 4,000 miles by foot to freedom in India.
AFTER: This is an amazing story about a group of (mostly Polish) escapees from a Russian prison - there's one American in the group, plus one Russian criminal, a Latvian priest and a Yugoslavian accountant, but the details hardly matter. The film here is a bit like what you'd get if you mixed together "The Shawshank Redemption", "The Great Escape" and "Into the Wild". (I thought that one of the escapees looked a bit like Emile Hirsch, but it wasn't him.)
What makes this story possible, however unlikely, is the fact that the Russians supposedly didn't spend much time tracking down gulag escapees, figuring that the harsh environment would take care of them - this group happened to possess enough survival skills to get away from the gulag, then they only had to endure a harsh Siberian winter as they trekked to Lake Baikal, a natural source of fresh water and food.
Once on the run, they learned ways to survive, by avoiding towns where they could be recognized and captured, and walking instead of running, which looked less suspicious. Still they had the worst luck, after surviving the Siberian winter they crossed the border into Mongolia, just in time to spend summer crossing the Gobi desert. And upon their arrival, they learned that Mongolia was now a Communist country, so they'd have to continue on to China to find a country that wasn't in league with the Axis powers. It seems the whole global political scene changed while they were in prison.
And then, once they reached China, guess what? Their best bet seemed to be to strike out for Tibet and then India, never mind this little thing in their way, known as the Himalayas - they didn't let that stop them, either. So, 4,000 miles from the Gulag to India, with no money, no resources, just the clothes on their back and the will to keep on walking. It would be nicer if the story was true, but Wikipedia seems to have cast some doubts on the veracity of this story. It's loosely based on the memoir "The Long Walk" from Slawomir Rawicz, but the BBC started poking holes in his claims sometime around 2006. Then another man came forward and said that this story happened to him, but that claim is also questionable.
Even if it never happened, it's still one hell of a story. After watching this, I've vowed to never ever complain again about how cold it gets during a New York City winter, or how hot it can get here in the summer, because it could always be worse, right? At least I'm not walking across Siberia after escaping from a Russian prison, or dying of thirst while walking across the Mongolian desert! I've also realized that I'm not very in touch with my Polish heritage, just one of my grandparents was born in Poland, but that's still 1/4 of my genetic background. My parents both identify as mostly German, but my mother's really German/Polish and my father's German/Irish. I've been to Bavaria and I think I understand what it means to be Irish, but I'd love to connect some time in the future with the rest of my heritage by visiting Poland and/or Alsace-Lorraine. (It's possible that my other grandfather came from Alsace while it was part of France, not Germany, but my father's family refuses to acknowledge any possibility of being French, it's German all the way...)
Now, this film really continues the theme that I accidentally hit on this week, which is that of people out of place in strange lands, forced to follow a different set of rules to fix their situation - it sounds weird, I know, but when you take a step back from these films, and think along these lines, you might come to realize that "The Way Back" and "Alice Through the Looking Glass" are, essentially, very similar films.
That being said, I've got to call NITPICK POINT, or at least "shenanigans" on this portrayal of people walking 4,000 miles from country to country - not because of whether the story is true or not, but because you've got to figure at some point in that journey, these escapees would find some place to stay for a while, to say, "Hey, you know what, this country's not so bad. Let's stay here for a month or two, maybe get a part-time job and earn some money, maybe relax, heal up and have some nice meals for a while." Unless they're really masochists at heart and enjoy suffering. You know, Lake Baikal looked pretty nice, with fresh water and a nice supply of fish - why didn't they stay there for a few months so they wouldn't have to cross the Gobi desert during SUMMER? But hey, I'm a planner, that's what I do, which comes in handy whether you're about to go on vacation, or trying to get away from Russian cossacks.
Also, the ending is really contrived, and I wish the film had told us the fates of all of the travelers who made it to India, instead of focusing on just one. I don't want to give anything away, but are we meant to believe that this guy kept walking and walking around the planet for the next 45 years, until Communism finally loosed its grip on Poland in what, 1989? In all that time he never stopped to rest, never held a part-time job, never found a place to hang his hat for a year or two? Come ON, I can't believe that. And in all that time, he couldn't call or write his wife, who was behind the Iron Curtain? They had phones, you know, or he could have mailed her a letter at some point in the 1970's or 1980's, to suggest otherwise presents me with a tale that's very hard to swallow. To have this ending follow such an amazing story is like fumbling the ball on the 1-yard line.
Also starring Jim Sturgess (last seen in "Cloud Atlas"), Colin Farrell (last seen in "Winter's Tale"), Mark Strong (last seen in "The Brothers Grimsby"), Saoirse Ronan (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Dragos Bucur, Alexandru Potocean, Gustaf Skarsgard, Sebastian Urzendowsky.
RATING: 6 out of 10 worn-out boots
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