As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me

Bernhard Bettermann in “As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me.”
‘Feet’ carries you into engrossing movie

The opening of "As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me" reminded me a little of one of those 1970s miniseries.
It's the end of World War II. A German soldier is being taken to prison by the Russians . He tells his pregnant wife and little daughter not to worry, he would be home for Christmas.
From there we can forget the TV movie aspect and are taken on an incredible journey that will keep you glued to the screen. It's been awhile since I've been so engrossed in a film. Made in 2001, I hate to admit I wasn't familiar with the movie or the plot. By the way, it is a remake of a 1959 German TV movie.
Clemens Forell, played by Bernhard Bettermann, is the German soldier sentenced to a labor camp in far east Siberia. You know it is cold when Forell, lying in the icy boxcar on his way to the mines, must wiggle free because his body froze to the wall.
If the cold existence on the train isn't enough, the soldiers are forced to walk the rest of the way.
While done on a small budget, there are some heart-in-stomach scenes, like when a horse breaks through the ice and struggles to break free. Already half-dead individuals fall through the ice and struggle with their last breaths to free themselves.
This film, we find out quickly, illustrates just how much the human body and soul can take.
Forell works the mines for four miserable years. A spur-of-the-moment escape attempt finds him in the hole in freezing rain. The hole is pretty much a storm drain, with water flowing over him.
He ends up ill and a doctor, who was stockpiling for his own escape, decides Forell has a better chance. Besides, the doctor, played by Michael Mendl, has cancer.
Now escape is no walk in the woods. This prison doesn't have razor wire or towers. They are in an icy abyss with no civilization for thousands of miles, so those things aren't necessary. Well, you might try getting to Alaska, but the U.S. was allied with Russia at the time and a prisoner would simply be returned.
But Forell decides to take the meager items, some warm clothing, bits of food, a gun and a few bullets, and attempt the escape. Otherwise, he will die in prison. Now this isn't one of those deals where after seven days on the lam he will find himself in a Howard Johnson's with a shave and hot shower. No, this is a year's commitment, he is told
And thus starts a nail-biting journey that pits the former soldier against man, beast and perhaps worst, the elements. It is a sort of "Lassie Come Home" revved up a few notches.
And that expected one-year of running turns to three.
And sort of like "The Fugitive" TV series, Forell has his own Lt. Gerrard, the head of the camp, Oberleutnant Kamenev, played by Anatolly Kotenyov, who continually stalks him.
This is simply the best action, suspense film I have seen in years. It's a testament to what the human brain and body can take and is well worth the more than the two-hour commitment to watch it.
Hey, all told, it was a seven-year commitment for Clemens Forell.

AS FAR AS MY FEET WILL CARRY ME
• Directed by Hardy Martins • Written by Josef Martin Bauer and Bastian Cleve • Runtime: 158 minutes • Not rated but may be too intense for young audiences • 5 stars out of 5

Magadlene Sisters

‘Magdalene Sisters’ tells of sad time for unwed mothers

NORA-JANE MOON in “The Magdalene Sisters.”

If you like movies about crazy, sadistic nuns — and who doesn’t — you’ll love “The Magdalene Sisters.”
This 2002 film takes place in 1964. We follow three women, two of whom had out-of-wedlock children. One is by rape.
No matter. Their children are taken from them and they are ordered, indefinitely, to Magdalene Asylum for young women.
This fact-based film takes us into this distorted world where religion is used as an excuse for cruelty and torture.
For their transgressions — real or imagined — the women are ordered to hard labor, doing laundry by hand in a sink and trying to get the pesky stains out of the priests’ collars. Their sentences are indefinite.
They aren’t allowed to talk and must listen to scripture while eating. Breakfast consists of a type of gruel, while the nuns enjoy eggs and bacon on the other side of a partition.
The nuns like to whip backslides, rap knuckles and play games in which the women must stand nude and be humiliated. Nuns decide who has the largest and smallest breasts, among other attributes. I won’t go further with my examples.
These nuns are definitely on the sick side of the sacraments.
When the nuns aren’t putting the girls through hell, they use an elderly woman to monitor and tongue lash the girls. Her pay, an automatic entrance into heaven.
Before the movie is over, she learns if that is true or not.
The nuns also seem to have a penchant for cutting the hair of the most unruly girls, going so far as to bloody the eyebrows. Ouch!
The film may be based on fact, but it does seem to go over the top at times.
It has an almost cult-like, “Mommy Dearest” quality to it. I can see a theater full of patrons chanting “Cut that hair. Cut that hair!”
In one scene, a young woman escapes from the institution, only to have her father thrash her violently and then deliver her, bloody and bleeding, back to the asylum.
There is a sensitive scene in the film where one of the inmates, while hanging out clothes, sees her sister and young son gazing at her. But she dare not react, risking the ire of the nuns.
It’s difficult to believe there could be such cruelty to these young women.
Geraldine McEwan does an admirable job as the sadistic Sister Bridget.
Dorothy Duffy plays a pretty girl who ends up at the institution because the boys pay too much attention to her at the orphanage.
Nora-Jane Noone plays a girl who is brutally raped by her cousin. When the sobbing teen comes down to tell a woman what happens, the cousin is ushered to safety and she is taken to the asylum. Imagine, a rape victim!
Mary Murray has a child out of wedlock and is forced to sign papers giving the baby up for adoption. She immediately changes her mind and ends up at the asylum.
It’s a film that will stay with you
I would hazard a guess you won’t find this film on the Eternal Word Television Network.

THE MAGDALENE SISTERS
• Runtime: 119 minutes
• Directed and written by Peter Mullan
• Rated R for violence, cruelty, nudity, sexual content and language.