It’s being touted as his best ever role, but, for Colin Farrell, playing Russian criminal Valka in The Way Back was his worst yet. The Irish charmer is a lead character in Australian director Peter Weir’s latest movie, about the gruelling journey of a group who escape a Siberian gulag in the 1940s.
Inspired by Slavomir Raqicz’s The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom, published in 1956, Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris and Farrell make the 6500km trek from Siberia to India.
It’s a harsh tale of POWs during the Second World War and is as much about the battle against the elements as it is a fight for freedom.
The group braves harsh snowstorms in the depths of Siberia – where they meet escapee Saoirse Ronan – and are forced to endure blistering heat while walking across the Gobi Dessert.
Watch The Way Back trailer and read TNT’s review here.
Farrell plays an animal-like, lawless gang leader who has a bizarre admiration of dictator Joseph Stalin, (he has the Russian’s face tattooed on his chest), despite him being held captive by Stalin’s soldiers. “Valka was, I think to this day, one of my least-favourite characters to play,” Farrell reveals to TNT.
“I found him very sad. A very lonely fella. Somebody who is at once a victim of, and a huge proponent of, the system which formed him, which shaped him. I found that really interesting.”
With 10 years in pre-production, the film has also been on a journey of discovery – and the story is still surrounded by controversy, as no evidence has been found to prove or disprove whether Raqicz’s tale was based on truth. Although it is believed the walk took place, it is not clear if Raqicz was on it.
But for six-time Academy Award nominee Weir, who hails from Sydney and is best known for Dead Poets Society, Gallipoli and The Truman Show, it was a challenge worth undertaking.
“Twenty million people passed through the gulags. This is the fictional account of seven of them, inspired by actual events,” Weir says about his first movie since 2003’s Master And Commander.
“We travel with our characters across four seasons, 12 months and some 10,000km, seeing how their behaviour and personalities are affected by such harsh circumstances. They are on the run, coping with nature, and trying to avoid conflict with anyone in their path, knowing there is a bounty on their heads.”
Weir reveals how important it was to have the movie as historically accurate as possible. “I wanted everything to be sourced back to a survivor’s account or a book written by a survivor,” he explains.
However, so realistic is the portrayal, that the group even had the right weather conditions at the right times.
“We had our wind machines and not two hours before, a sand storm was heading through,” the director adds.
“If we needed snow, snow came.”
Lead actor Jim Sturgess jokes that Weir must be at one with the weather gods. “Peter has friends in some very high places,” he laughs.
And, thanks to the Oscar-tipped film, Sturgess, 29, is now on many experts’ Actor To Watch lists for 2011 after his role as Polish officer Janusz.
It was a tough film for him, too. In a life-imitates-art twist, Sturgess discovered what physical extremes really were after suffering food poisoning while battling the elements during filming in the Sahara.
In the spirit of the film, though, director Weir found a way back: “I held my breath and we got through it.”
Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Peter Weir, Saoirse Ronan and Jim Sturgess.
Peter Weir’s best films
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Weir helped put Aussie filmmaking on the map in the 70s with this atmospheric tale of a Victorian-era school trip which goes horribly wrong when some students disappear.
Witness
Kelly McGillis got her boobies out for Harrison Ford in this drama about an on-the-run cop who seeks refuge in an Amish community. Weir got his first Oscar nod for this flick.
The Truman Show
Weir directed Jim Carrey in his first semi-serious role in this scarily prescient film about a man whose life is lived in a reality TV show.
Master and Commander
Russell Crowe is so principled as Captain Jack Aubrey that you can almost forget he’s the same bloke who threw a phone at a concierge.
The Way Back is in cinemas on Dec 26
