The new film by Peter Weir, "The Way Back" is located in Siberia, Mongolia and then. Then, in Tibet. And India. And finally, Poland. All this suggests that Weir has maintained his obsession with a restless, fugitive emissions, and lost. He was there to burn, bespectacled gaze Harrison Ford, and was directed by an American family in the dark heart of the "Mosquito Coast", a rapidity that almost maniacal Weir, better than anyone else, seen and monitored by Mel Gibson, packaging to fight, "Gallipoli" and tell the Jakarta riots "The Year of Living Dangerously" in the stubbornness with Jim Carrey in "The Truman Show," tried to flee from his home to fake something real, and the apartment also lush tropical Andie MacDowell in "Green Card" with the music thrummed jungle at night when he and Gerard Depardieu was lying on a separate rooms, wake up craving.

"The Way Back" is particularly unlusty. His characters are so reduced to the essentials of life, even sex feels like a luxury, a distant echo of civilization, such as hygiene or books. The first quarter of the film takes place in a prison camp in Siberia in 1940 and it is rare, affecting moments echo returns: When a tenant, an artist sketches of nude women to do fee and another tells remember scenes of "Treasure Island" to a crowd of stone against thugs. They listen as children in breath, as if no indication in a world elsewhere, especially in a warm place was a blessing.

For others, less patient residents fleeing not limited to the imagination. People like Janusz (Jim Sturgess), a young Polish officer, Valka (Colin Farrell), a Russian and an American murderer known as Smith (Ed Harris). "And your name?" He asked. "Sir," he says. We are far from James Stewart here, Mr. Smith received a no further than Washington, but it was designed by the communist ideal, took a job in Moscow, before he fell against the regime. Harris clearly trust Weir, who gave him the divine role in the TV director in "The Truman Show" is as solid as ever, his face more divided and desperate than his colleagues. It seems strangely at ease in the cutting conditions, while the rest of the cast, no fault of their own, do not look like shriveled from starvation as they should. Deep Poverty this kind, inflicted by the Gulag, can and should perhaps-impossible to counterfeit.

Seven prisoners slip through the thread of a night in a southerly direction to Lake Baikal. In the opening credits, we learn many of them finally get to freedom by crossing the Himalayas to India after a hike of about 4000 miles. What strikes me as a faux pas on the Weir is a part, as not to know the survival rate would be the spark that excitement. Homeric journey, rooted in the desire to return home, is both the most venerable of all models and narrative, as "way back" demonstrates one of the most difficult to dramatize. Anthony Minghella hit the same problem in "Cold Mountain": an odyssey when you get down to it, is just one damn thing after another. The best scene in "The Way Back" is the first in which Janusz, probably in Moscow, is denounced as a spy on the testimony of his wife.

His testimony without foundation, he realizes, was irritated by it under torture, and zeal for this sequence, with its flame of mental anguish, did the rest of the film, for all its mountain of endurance tests, a little flat and taut feeling.

"The Way Back" is based on "The Long Walk," a memoir of Slavomir Rawicz, published in 1956. Since then, serious doubts were raised about its accuracy, although Weir Screenplay, which he wrote with Keith Clarke, is in itself more free than the faithful, with names changed and major episodes elided. It must have been trying to keep Ushakova, the wife of the commander of the camp, according Rawicz, conspired with him to assist in the escape, but no trace of his remains on the screen. If something is not wrong avoided here, but gained prominence as the men met a teenage runaway, Irena (Saoirse Ronan) who keeps changing his story in an attempt to win their support. It can also get them to confide their stories until they hoarded like bread. Paltering all this increases the suspicion that "The Way Back," as so many heroic accounts that can be gold with a touch of deceit.

Consequently, any person who enters the movie waiting to be swept can get disappointed, and the images are not firing helicopters are rising hills and valleys, but the glow of the occasional moans as Irena, or as most of Weir "Picnic at Hanging Rock" are a little too attractive to be trustworthy. Like Australia, it seems more comfortable with the desert dust and clumps of Mongolia, the central part of the film, as in the snows of the limits of its beginning and end, and we have a wonderful mist the birds of prey circling above, may or may not be a mirage. Simply run the thirsty travelers, such as fog drifting sea on the principle of "Master and Commander," Weir film before, was enough to wake the master of your neighborhood, in case of a foreign enemy hiding .

This new work is equally spectacular, and Weir continues to revel in the chance that his characters stumble into the surreal, or trap beyond the limits of civilization. But he also knows how to awaken us, just a frivolous gift to any filmmaker, and I'm not sure, in this respect as "The Way Back" is really a way forward for Peter Weir, or whether we should mark c is down a long wonderful work horses.