As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me

R2

Second Sight Films

Clear English subtitles

The film is about the escape of German prisoner Clemens Forell from a Russian prison camp in Siberia and his long trek to return to his family. The film is supposedly based on a true story but there are inconsistencies in Forell’s account that cast some doubt. The story is rather similar to a 1956 book by a Polish soldier, Slavomir Rawicz, who escaped from a Siberian camp and with a few friends made it to safety in British India. That story, The Long Walk, has many similarities to this later film. Rawicz’s story also had some doubts about its accuracy. It was made into a film called The Way Back in 2010. Regardless of any doubts and antecedents As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me is still a superb film with a good plot and script, first class acting and wonderful cinematography.

The story starts with Clemens leaving for the Russian Front. His wife is pregnant with their second child. He promises his daughter that he will return from the war. That promise takes many years to keep.

Clemens is captured. As a German officer he is automatically regarded by the Russians as a spy and is sentenced in a kangaroo court to 25 years in Siberia. The prison camp serves a lead mine and prisoners often die from lead poisoning, hunger and typhoid. After four years Forell knows he must escape or he will die in captivity. With the help of the German camp doctor he escapes. The Russians will expect him to head west, so he goes south instead. He struggles across the trackless snowfields of the Arctic Circle and survives the winter. In the great sub-Arctic forests of Siberia he is helped by a couple of escaped gold miners, but their help is shortlived when they fight each other over the gold they have stolen from the mining camp.

He falls in with a group of local reindeer herders near Yakutsk, and starts a liaison with the head man’s widowed daughter. Learning that the Russians are now searching this area for him, he has to leave and continue his trek. He is relentlessly pursued by the Russian camp commandant who seems to take his escape personally.

Slowly Clemens makes his way through the new Soviet Republics until he is at the Turkish border. With freedom just across the border bridge, he is stunned to find the commander waiting for him.

Although there is not a lot of action in the film, the tension is more than kept up by Clemens’ constant brushes with the Russians. He must use a combination of bluff and self-reliance to keep going, helped only by his small amount of Russian. The cinematography captures Clemens’ loneliness perfectly by contrasting him against the beautiful but largely empty scenery of the tundra, the forests and then the mountains. The few small kindnesses he is shown by people he meets also contrast with the harsh and bureaucratic Russian system. His inner strength is tested, and there are moments when he is on the verge of giving up, but over the course of his 3000 kilometre escape he toughens up.

We can find great satisfaction in his final arrival back home and his reunion with his family.

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