As Far as my Feet will Carry me

has anyone seen this movie?

Apparently the movie is derived from a 2003 book that is a re-issue of this book:

[quote]In 1956, a Polish man living in the English midlands published an extraordinary book that became one of the classic tales of escape and endurance.

In The Long Walk, Slavomir Rawicz described how, during the Second World War, he and a group of prisoners broke out of a gulag in the Soviet Union in 1941. They walked thousands of miles south from Siberia, through Mongolia, Tibet, across the Himalayas, to the safety of British India.[/quote]

I picked up hte video yesterday and didn’t have time to watch it yet, so I may watch it tonight. But I was a little surprised (and disappointed) when I got home to notice that it’s 150 minutes (2.5 hours) and is in German with English subtitles. Is it worth sparing that much valuable time for nonetheless?

Has anyone read the book and seen the movie? How do they compare?

I haven’t read the book, but I have seen the movie. Some parts of it seemed a bit melodramatic to me, but it was overall a good movie. The landscapes are amazing.

The movie is about a German soldier named Clemens Forell, not a Polish guy. It’s based on a book about Forell by Joseph Martin Bauer. I think the book has the same name as the movie. Forell was truly a hardcore fothermucker. I seem to remember reading that the movie was somewhat of a hit in Europe, but that the US film industry wasn’t interested in showing/distributing a move about a Nazi soldier escaping to freedom.

I think this movie fits into a fairly recent genre of German movies and books that aren’t afraid of looking at how some Germans suffered badly after the war. Thousands of German soldiers were put in work camps in the Russian far east and left to die there by the USSR. For a long time, it wasn’t really PC for Germans to bring this sort of thing up, but after decades of acknowledging Nazi crimes, it’s now more acceptable to talk about some of the things that happened to Germans in the Soviet controlled areas.

Oh dear. Having to watch a “foreign” movie with English subtitles? What a hard life! :unamused:

Rather that than badly dubbed, IMHO.

Funny if they past Heinrich Harrer as he trekked away from his English captors in India (Seven years in Tibet).

HG

Slavomir Rawicz’s “The Long Walk” is almost certainly fiction; his descriptions and the travel times are bogus, not to mention the yetis thrown in at the end.
When I first heard of this tale I briefly considered (well, was day-dreaming about) doing a “in the footsteps of” journey and book. However, it soon became obvious that the story was bogus.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6098218.stm

I’m surprised. With your fixation for shrunken feet, shrunken heads, cannibals and the like, I would’ve figured you were a yeti hunter as well. :wink:

Oh well, the Long Walk may or may not be fiction. I don’t think anyone knows for certain. But, apparently it’s a different story (both purportedly true, historical accounts).

Here’s The Long Walk:

And Here’s As far as my Feet will Carry Me:

Same genre, practically the same journey, but apparently two different journeys.

[quote=“Mother Theresa”]
I picked up hte video yesterday and didn’t have time to watch it yet, so I may watch it tonight. But I was a little surprised (and disappointed) when I got home to notice that it’s 150 minutes (2.5 hours) and is in German with English subtitles. Is it worth sparing that much valuable time for nonetheless? [/quote]
Wait a second. Aren’t you supposed to be studying Chinese? Forget what I said about this being a good movie. Get your ass back in the study and review for your next Chinese lesson. :wink:

[quote=“Jive Turkey”][quote=“Mother Theresa”]
I picked up hte video yesterday and didn’t have time to watch it yet, so I may watch it tonight. But I was a little surprised (and disappointed) when I got home to notice that it’s 150 minutes (2.5 hours) and is in German with English subtitles. Is it worth sparing that much valuable time for nonetheless? [/quote]
Wait a second. Aren’t you supposed to be studying Chinese? Forget what I said about this being a good movie. Get your ass back in the study and review for your next Chinese lesson. :wink:[/quote]

That’s exactly right. I’d like very much to watch the movie, but 2.5 hours is a lot of valuable time that could, theoretically, be spent studying Chinese. So maybe I was hoping people would say it’s a really boring, crappy movie, so I would feel good about not watching it and studying instead. All very unlikely, but one can dream, right?

[quote=“almas john”]When I first heard of this tale I briefly considered (well, was day-dreaming about) doing a “in the footsteps of” journey and book. However, it soon became obvious that the story was bogus.
[/quote]

You’re just jealous cause he didn’t have a 6.9 degree earthquake destroy his route the day before he set out. :slight_smile:

Well, I watched the movie last night (and this morning before work) and really enjoyed it.

Amazing story of German soldier captured at the end of WWII, sent off on a train to far, far, far northern Siberia, with a 25-year sentence of hard labor in a coal mine (more accurately, a life sentence, as everyone could be expected to die there eventually). He escapes and treks 14,000 km over 3 years, across the desolate snowy wastelands, then all kinds of beautiful other scenery, with the authorities always hot on his heels, determined to recapture and punish him.

Good acting, beautiful scenery, good drama, moderate amount of violence but not gratuitous as in many Hollywood productions, no nudity (big disappointment given the beauuuutiful “eskimo” girl who appeared to be on the verge of disrobing for the camera. It’s a german film based on allegedly historical events. Obviously they took some creative liberties with the facts, but they did so in a good way – I wasn’t demanding historical accuracy, but I found it to be a very entertaining film.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: