Customer Reviews

As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This film is the story (based on one man's true experiences) of a German POW who is sent to the far reaches of Siberia in July of 1945. Says a Soviet officer not long after his arrival at Cape Dezhnev prison, notwithstanding the end of the war: "You'll never leave this place. You're going to be buried here. All of us." & "this place" is a lead mine near the Bering Straits that resembles what hell would be if it was characterized by extreme cold as opposed to fire. Determined to escape and return to his family in Germany our protagonist herein (by the name of Clemens Forell) struggles to survive as fellow prisoners drop dead around him; whether from a bullet to the head for hesitating a moment upon a Red Army officer's instructions, or from simply being worked to death. The first hour-plus of this albeit long film is thus devoted to the Soviet Gulag aspect of this film---the bitter cold, the harsh landscapes, cruel Stalinist treatment; in sum, all that is the farce of Communism's "Workers of the World Unite" claptrap as bodies are treated as animals.

Say, how many times have you seen on film any visualizations of a Soviet Gulag/concentration camp? Take all the time you need, I'll wait as you count the numerous films about Nazi Germany trying to name but one that shows up Stalinism for what it really was; ie., more akin to Nazi Germany than Hollywood would like you to believe. This is a rather well made film, mind you, but it is also significant for its portrayal of this aspect of Soviet brutality. The rest of the film concerns the triumph of the human spirit as this German escapes from Soviet Hell and attempts to make it all the way back, over barren rugged land, through Siberian ice, over dangerous rivers, to Germany to see the family who thinks him dead. Do give it some of your time (well, it's a little more than some, as this film is rather drawn out and a bit long) should you get the chance to view this film. It's a story worth seeing. Cheers!

This is film is based on a true story of a German soldier Clemens Forrell who is sent to the Russian front and taken captive at the end of the war. He's sent to a labor camp where death seems much more appealing than staying alive. What keeps him going is the memory of his wife and a promise he made to his daughter that he'd return. He's able to escape with the help of a German doctor who has stashed away supplies and provisions for his own escape, but when he finds out he's got a cancer he knows he won't make it himself. He also knows Clemens has the endurance, smarts and toughness to make the journey. So he gives him the provisions, gun, clothes and everything he stashed away and sends him off on his way. Clemans takes 3 years and 8000 miles before he makes it to Iran, only to end up in a prison there as a Russian spy. Luckily he's rescued from there and able to return to Germany to his family who haven't given up hope.

Not that I'm a fan of Germany in WWII, but this movie makes you feel some empathy for the German POWs who were hauled off to Siberia to labor camps for the rest of their lives. Their treatment by Russians is truly deplorable, which is hardly surprising. First of all, the Germans were ruthless and brutal toward Russian civilians during their initial invasion of USSR. Besides that the Russians did not treat their own people any better let alone show any respect for their captives.

It's a great story and I give it four stars. The thing that made me take a star off the rating is that it is a bit too melodramatic. More than it needs to be in my opinion. Specifically, I'm referring to the movie-long chase of the prisoner by the camp commander. There is no way a prison camp commander would be allowed to travel across Russia to chase after an escaped prisoner. A commander who had a prisoner escape on his watch would be careful not to report it in order to avoid repercussions. He'd do a search for him for a while no doubt, given there were any tracks or any way to follow the escapee. But he would not worry about it beyond an initial unsuccessful search assuming the cold, hunger and wolfs would take care of the prisoner sooner or later. After all, Siberia is a pretty vast country and pretty unforgiving too. Chances of survival for a lone escapee who knows no local language, has no map or compass would be pretty minimal. Neither were the Russians in the late 40's sophisticated enough to have radios and communication systems in remote areas of the Siberia (native Siberian villages) to receive news about escaped prisoners. Undoubtedly, these things were added to "dramatize" the story and keep the viewer on his toes, but it takes away from the authenticity. I personally like real life stories told "as they are" without any embellishment. However, it is a griping film and a very interesting story of endurance and survival.

This is a German movie with English subtitles, but dont let that stop you. Based on a true story about a German held prisoner in a Russian labor camp somewhere in Siberia. His escape and the long journey home to the family he was forced to leave behind. I do not speak German & am not into subtitles, but this one really struck an accord with me. I rented it at a video place & enjoyed it so much that I not only purchased the DVD for my extensive DVD library, but have also ordered the book. Take a chance....watch this movie as it will stay with you awhile, not be forgotten like a lot of other movies you watched.

I don't know why the movie deviated so much from the real story but it's truly a shame. If you really want to experience this then you must get the book and read what happened. I'll just touch on a few of things they added into the movie that never happened in the book:

1. Love affair with the tribal lady - This NEVER happened but they put it into the movie for some stupid reason. The whole motivation for him making this journey in the first place was to get back to his wife and kids.
2. The jew that "saved" him at the end - While he did receive a place to stay from a jew at one point towards the end of the book, he never provided any papers and as much help that the movie tries to push. There were never any moments where they discussed the holocaust as they did in the movie. You have to think about it and ask yourself; "Why would a Wehrmacht POW know anything about the holocaust?". Clearly the people that did the movie had an agenda and it's why they pushed the part about the jew, fabricating it to great extremes. It made my stomach turn to watch this part of the movie.
3. There was never any showdown between the Russian slave camp officer and Clemens as the movie tries to claim. This flat out NEVER happened in the book.

Basically, this movie is nowhere near the real story! I don't know why they decided to massacre what really happened but they did. They obviously had the rights to the story and could do whatever they wanted - and they did. Stay away from this garbage and read the book.
Too bad because I really enjoy Michael Mendl (Dr Stauffer) and Bernhard Bettermann (Clemens) as actors and find it difficult to believe they took part in this travesty.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)

This is a German language film with English subtitles based on the novel by the same name which was based on a true story about a German POW in the aftermath of WWII who escaped a Siberia work camp and made an amazing 8,000-mile trek home to Munich to be reunited with his family.

I haven't read the novel, but of course it was a novel and so much of it was made up. It doesn't matter however, since what counts in a movie is simply the movie itself. I am always a little put off when the blurbs for a film scream out: "Based on a true story!" So what? Sometimes that's significant and sometimes it isn't. In this case the fact that there actually existed a German POW who managed such an amazing escape is important. The exact details of what happened to him would be wonderful to have. But in lieu of that, we do have this wonderful movie.

Bernhard Bettermann stars as Clemens Forell, and he is perfect for the part. To survive such an epic adventure the person has to be strong of body and strong of will. Bettermann looks as though he could actually do something like this, except for the fact that he is so tall and pale I suspect he would stand out and be easily identified as a foreigner in those strange lands through which he trekked. Also a bit not so realistic is the Soviet camp commander who personally chases Forell all the way to the Iranian border (although that resulted in a nice ironic scene on the bridge at the border between Iran and what--I think--is Turkmenistan). In reality there were probably several Soviet officers who played that part. And I would also liked to have seen a little more about how he found enough to eat. And finally it is clear that the last parts of his journey were sped up a bit as though the filmmakers were in a hurry. But these are small quibbles.

I don't know if this "coloration" (as I will call it) was in the book, but what director Harvey Martins does is make the tall and "Aryan" Forell experience some of the same horrors that the Jews experienced. In the beginning he is in a cattle car and nearly starved to death as he is taken to the Siberian lead mines. He is in rags and nearly frozen and gets kicked around by sadistic soldiers. If you saw just this part of the movie you would swear it was about the Jews being sent to a concentration camp. In the camp after Forell is caught in an early escape attempt he is shown being beaten by his fellow soldiers, who of course, were punished because he tried to escape. This was exactly the sort of thing the Nazis did in the occupied countries during WWII--if a single German was killed, that killing would be revenged many times over. Later, one of the people who helped Forell is a Jew who lost relatives to the Nazis. Nonetheless he helps Forell, and in doing so demonstrates not only a superior morality, but the kind of courage that is rare. And why did he do it? Because that is the kind of person he is, and that is the kind of persons we all should be.

While Forell is a positive, even a heroic figure, and a nice change for Germans who have to endlessly read about and see Germans portrayed in a most negative way throughout their whole lives, the movie itself tends to be neutral politically.

The scenes of the snow and the forests and the various places that Forell travels through are nicely done. The ending is exquisite and brought me to tears.

This is an entertaining movie, don't get me wrong. But as the old cliche goes, the book is definitely better than the movie. Read the book first, THEN check this movie out. Regardsless, the story (which is mainly true) is incredible. It deals with a former German POW who escapes from Siberia back to Germany. The original book was written after Josef Bauer, an author, heard that a former POW, Clemens Forell, had seen a Yeti in the Himalayas. There must certainly have been some creative license when Bauer recounted the tale, but it is still an amazing story.

Unfortunately, the movie glosses over or removes many central characters to the book which probably would have bogged down or considerably lengthened the movie. Regardless, the move is still entertaining. My only complaint is the cheesy love scene between Forell and the native Central Asian girl. It is Harlequin romance on film. Blah...

Otherwise I recommend it.

This well executed film was based on the late-1950s work written about Clemens Forrell by Josef M. Bauer. The plot follows the plight of Clemens across thousands of miles of terrain - from his shipment by Soviet forces to a labor camp in Siberia following World War II, through to his eventual escape and return to his wife and daughter several years later. Unlike most films, the German in this piece is seen as the victim, even though he had been in alignment with the German political structure during the war. Up to this point, this reviewer has been engrossed in works about Germans who suffered following the war who had no connection with the German state (see my reviews for "Bread on My Mother's Table: A Danube Swabian Remembers" by Ingrid Andor, "Barefoot in the Rubble" by Elizabeth B. Walter, and "A Terrible Revenge, Second Edition, Fully Revised and Updated: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans" by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas). But this foreign film takes a different approach, viewing Forrell simply as a human being who was torn from his family, stripped of his dignity, and starved and worked to near death. The story has a happy ending, as Forrell's perseverance to escape his imprisonment is rewarded time and time again, including escape assistance provided to him by a German physician in the work camp, and later a Jewish civilian, in the most uncertain circumstances (and aided throughout his journey by the continued memory of his wife and child, with whom he desperately sought to be reunited). One of the most moving scenes in the movie shows Forrell bowing to say the Lord's Prayer. Some of the scenes are quite painful to watch, especially those showing torture, and the result of subzero temperatures on the human body. The scenes of Forrell travelling through the Siberian wilderness caused this reviewer to ponder the plight of the Donauschwabens in his own immediate family (descendants of Germans who had immigrated to an area that was later Yugoslavia, far removed from the political climate of the time who shared similar fates following the war due to their ethnicity), and as such the stoicism that helped many survive the post-World War II period was not present while watching this film. Be aware that this film is in German with English subtitles. There is very little dialogue, so the subtitles should be bearable for those not used to following print on the screen, and some might be interested in knowing that the German used in the film is so simple that anyone with a little knowledge of the language should understand it.

i read the book in its entirety before watching the movie, and the latter pales in comparison. the book was absolutely amazing, whereas the movie glosses over even seemingly important plots in the book, and depicts scenes differently than in the book.

book is a must read...i can't give a great review to the movie b/c it doesn't do the story justice.

There have been a lot of great movies about incarceration, escape and people defying incredible odds to survive, and this excellent movie based upon true events and the book by Josef Martin Bauer rates among the best in my opinion.
I have not (as yet) read the book, and understand that the movie takes some liberties with the story. At face value this was probably essential to add some distraction to what would have otherwise been probably a slow plodding story.
This notwithstanding, I found the film to be tense, absorbing and emotional as you follow the character of Clemens Forell through his epic, and amazing journey.
The story is essentially straightforward, an enlisted soldier in the German army bids his daughter and wife (expecting their unborn child) farewell at a train station toward the end of World War II, heading for (one assumes) the Russian front.
The story moves quickly forward to his arrest and trial, and imprisonment and transfer by train to a Russian Gulag (along with many other German soldiers) for crimes against Mother Russia.
He arrives at Cape Dezhnev on the far eastern peninsula of the Asian continent by the Bering Sea, a forced labor camp to mine lead for the Russians.
If you want to get a flavor for his mammoth undertaking on foot, I urge you to map this location online.
The first half of the movie deals with this, and the brutality and inhuman conditions he and his fellow soldiers face under the guard of the base commander Kamenev, who tells him to forget all chances of ever leaving this wintry hell.
The second half of the movie deals with his escape, and 3 year 8,000 mile journey to try and reach Germany and home.
It is at times a little slow, but visually stunning, and emotional charged and tense throughout.
I read some reviews ask why the viewer should feel sorry for a German soldier after "What they did to others in the War" but would ask that you watch this, and see it for what it is. An enlisted man, taken from his family to fight for his country, perhaps blindly, but a million miles removed from the politics and atrocities of his superiors.
He could have been wearing a uniform of any nation.
Failing to feel for his plight and story for these reasons is a churlish take on humanity.

Although you may know how the story ends, it is no worse in the telling, and although the film is in German with subtitles, the movie contains minimal dialogue, and relies on a visual depth of storytelling.
Excellent performances all round, not least from Bernhard Bettermann as Forell, and Anatoliy Kotenyov as his relentless pursuer, this is a movie that shows the depth of the human spirit, and a love that drives a man to impossible ends.
Release in on an unrated Region 1 DVD.
A Blu-Ray release would be nice, currently this is only available in Europe and NOT this film, but the highly popular 376 minute 50's TV serialization seen on German TV
Truly excellent movie. Highly recommended

One of the best movies I have ever seen,too bad we dont make movies like this in the USA. You cant go wrong on this one.