Director Peter Weir Talks About New Film 'The Way Back,' Working with Colin Farrell

The Way Back"" src="//cfm.yidio.com/images/article/images/artcile_632.jpg" style="margin: 5px; width: 300px; height: 382px; float: left;" />Seven years after his last film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and after a few failed movie projects Australian director Peter Weir finally came up with war drama “The Way Back” starring Colin Farrel, Saoirse Ronan, Jim Sturgess and Ed Harris.

During an interview with Reuters, Weir explained that prior to filming “The Way Back” he was working on some other projects however, and they weren't quite working.

The director said, "There were three other projects I was working on but they didn't happen. I pulled out of one and we disagreed over something on the other. It was a frustrating period. I had to find a kind of patience so that I didn't panic and take on a movie that wasn't right for me."

According to Weir he read the story about ‘The Way Back” and thought that it was the right project for him so he started researching and interviewing survivors in Moscow.

The stories of people he interviewed convinced Weir that the movie was worth doing, and he incorporated the survivor’s description of their lives in the camps into the script.

The director explained that the journey of the people during the war inspired him to work on the film. Weir said, "I think it was the nature of the journey, to walk 4,000 miles to freedom. These were innocent people, ordinary people. It was a chance to look closely at the human spirit. What kind of qualities does an individual have which will draw them to push on, to put one foot in front of the other? That, coupled with the fantastic series of landscapes."

Weir also explained his reason why he chose Colin Farrel, Saoirse Ronan, Jim Sturgess and Ed Harris to play in the movie. The director said, "There's always a temptation to cast the nationality in the part, but that gets impractical. Plus there's certain people you want to work with and after all, this is show business -- the actors are pretending. I didn't want the group to be all American, or all English who are doing accents. I wanted to get a representation of nationalities."

He recalled one of his memorable experience while filming in Morocco. According to him, he noticed an Arab man in long robes who was in-charge in keeping snakes off the set and had been watching him for three days.

Weir said that the man whispered to him,"The desert is with you." After that his first thought was, “Wow that was just like a movie scene!' Then I thought, I'm glad it's not against me!"

“The Way Back” is a story about prisoners who escape from a Siberian gulag and managed to walk 4000 miles, all the way to Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, China and India, to attain freedom based on the 1956 book written by Slavomir Rawicz entitled, "The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom."

Bonus Material: Watch the Trailer for "The Way Back"