The Way Back

Went to my first movie in a theater for the year: The Way Back.  I guess this movie came out in 2010 but I had not heard of it at all other than someone sending me a link for the trailer to this movie.  And the trailer intrigued me.

I called up Swede and told him that if he was in the state this week we ought to see this movie!  He showed up in time to grab a bite and then go to the film.  Like me, he loved it also - but for separate reasons.

What he saw was a movie which could have been called, "Triumph of the Will".  Yeah, bad title, since the Nazi's already used that one, but the concept holds.  Man is capable of tremendous feats when challenged.  Death and suffering are just part of the inconvenience of accomplishing one's goals.

I saw this movie on the one hand as being allegorical.  Here was the good and bad of humanity brought together.  The bad could not succeed without the good - nor could the good without the bad.  Definite borderline Christian undertones here!  As the story progresses you learn that one of the men is an Orthodox priest, but that part is really played down!

On the other hand we have the true story of what mankind will attempt to right the injustices done them.  No matter the cost.  These gulag escapees traveled 4,000 miles through every imaginable environment, they knew starvation and thirst and the loss of fellow travelers.

Painfully, I could relate with this movie.  No I never had to walk 4,000 but I did 650 in a survival march.  And I knew the unbelievable cold and unbelievable heat.  I knew hunger and thirst, then the weakness of spirit which accompanies this.  Being so tired you can not even remember the miles passing under your feet, so thirsty it pains to have water even touch your tongue.  And I knew the fear which comes from being hunted by those whom hold your life cheap.  And of the 9 of us whom set out, the loss of 7 whom died most horribly (along with the tragedy of losing all of our supplies!). But, even through this catastrophe, I saw that there was a God and longed to join Him and end the suffering.....  Yet, He had other plans for me - like finding Him on His terms and then serving Him.

So the movie moved me, not because they could even portray what I have just described for you but because I have lived each of those sequences they portrayed.

Where would I have been in real life, in that movie?  Probably shot in an opening sequence.  I recognize within myself the rebel which does not take kindly to the abuse of my fellow man.  But, had I of survived to take the walk, odds are good of making it.  As for Swede?  We have long suspected he will die long before the rest of us musketeers.  He is not strong either in body or spirit.  But, if someone was going to take a grenade for you - he would be the one.  The Dutchman would be the one dragging our half dead carcasses across the desert.....

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So, I spent a restless night remembering a very long ago forgotten episode in my life and I came to understand something about myself I never had before.  It was not so much the being a social odd duck, or being a German thrust into an English culture, that made me who I am, it was those 658 miles.  It was the loss of almost everyone whom started out with me, it was having faced a welcomed death and surviving which changed the character inside of me forever.  It was the brutal lesson of man against man, man and nature, and seeing an unknown God at work which molded my character - when you should be dead and are not, the thinking man must ask why.....

Knowing there was nothing special about me or the other survivor, recognizing that my survival was too random - to have been random, learning that I truly count for nothing.  But, of course, this episode was what started my seeking Him and giving me the early ability to take a stand and know that it is about Him and not about me.