Cinema Science

eter Weir is set to direct The Way Back, the fact-based story of the escape of soldiers from a Siberian gulag in 1940.

Weir wrote the script and based it on several sources, most notably the Slavomir Rawicz book "The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom." The book is Rawicz's account of being captured by the Red Army in 1939 and his journey to freedom with other inmates. The group crossed the Siberian arctic, the Gobi desert and the Himalayas, finally settling in Tibet and India.

This is good news for two reasons, anytime Weir makes a film (The Truman Show, Witness, Master and Commander) it should be cause for celebration. The guy makes damn good movies. The second is that I am a huge fan of the source material. I read it about a year ago (I love stories about traveling over long distances, especially walking and fighting for survival) and it is a fantastic story. The lengths these men go to to escape to freedom is really fascinating and it should make for an incredible film.

NOTE: Just in case you are curious, here are some other books I can recommend about people walking and surviving and stuff:

Primo Levi's "If Not Now, When?"
Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods"
John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" (not fighting for survival, I know, but its a great book)
Alfred Lansing's "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage"

Ok, there are more I could think of but I'm drawing a blank. I will need to go home and look at my bookshelf to get some more ideas but we all know that I will never do that.