The Way [DVD]

This was clearly a very personal project for director/producer/writer Emilio Estevez, who drafted in the heavyweight services of his father Martin Sheen for their third collaboration together. Estevez clearly has plenty of talent which he displays with this well intentioned if a little predictable affair. Thankfully the films earnestness, its good humour, and the characters who you begin to warm to as they trudge their way along the Camino de Santiago a famous Spanish pilgrimage route, steer the film away from the well of tearful sentiment it could have plunged headlong into. The recent Australian film "The Tree" cleverly used a giant fig tree as the metaphor for grief. In this film it is all about the journey, and although it is all on foot, this is a road journey if ever there was one.

In the film Martin Sheen's son, played by Estevez himself in flashback, dies whilst attempting to make the great pilgrimage. Eye surgeon Sheen flys from the comfort of his Californian home to France to collect the ashes. Sheen never able to fully understand his sons philosophy towards life, "you don't choose a life, you live one", decides to complete the walk himself for his dead son, and in the process gain a better understanding of his only child. Along the way he meets an assortment of characters. A fat Dutchman walking the route to lose weight so that his wife will sleep with him again. An irritating Irish author played by James Nesbitt, and a Canadian divorcee played by Deborah Kara Unger who suffered past brutality at the hands of a cruel husband. The typical sort of mixed bunch in need of a bit of redemption, which they duly receive along the way. Dutch actor Yorick Van Waginingen shamelessly steals the show as the fat Dutchman, with laugh out loud comments like "if its not Dutch its not much". Those Dutch get everywhere, and yes they do have a great sense of humour. He is utterly convincing as the kind hearted man who just can't keep a secret. Apart from his overblown entrance, Nesbitt is also very good and shows a fair hand at baton twirling on the journey. Hollywood legend Sheen lives up to his big reputation as the reticent moody widower who gradually opens up to those around him. Real life Canuck Deborah Unger holds her own in such strong alpha male company.

The film is well shot, clearly on location, and runs for around the two hour mark, which is a good length of time to warm to the characters. Although I am not a Catholic, the walk itself looked very appealing. Perhaps a little harder than the Cotswold Way, which is the last one I did? A few more blisters in this film might have added realism! The film cleverly fuses the old world with the new. Hence we have grand old churches and a modern wind farm mixed in together. Watching the wind turbines was a strong reminder of Don Quixotes tilting at windmills, which was probably why Estevez included them. How can you not fail to like walkers who sensibly take a break from spartan accommodation to luxuriate in a height of opulence parador. Now these are my kind of walkers! The films good humour and good intentions won me over. On my next curry/film night with the lads, they are quite old lads now, this one may well get another airing. Both entertaining and thought provoking which is a winning combination.

I thoroughly enjoyed "The Way". It is the story of an American father (Martin Sheen) who goes to Europe to collect the body of his son, who has been killed in an accident while starting the pilgrimage known as "The Camino de Santiago". The "Camino" starts in France and finishes in North Western Spain.

He decides to finish the route with his son's ashes. I feared that the movie would be too sentimental for my liking but this is not the case.

Thanks to some excellent acting and a well-written script we get to see into the lives of Sheen's character and the companions he meets along the way. They are all doing the pilgrimage for their own reasons but the movie never becomes maudlin as it explains their stories.

A lot of credit must go to Sheen's son, Emilio Estevez, who directed and wrote the story.

This could have been a sloppily sentimental, mawkish Hollywood movie. Or it could have been a deeply depressing European art-house film full of bitter regret. Instead, `The Way' veers to neither extreme and treads a careful path somewhere in between.
`The Way' examines the nature of pilgrimage, the father-son bond, interaction between strangers, the reality of loss and how different people deal with it, and how new friendships can develop from the most harsh moments in life. The first act is extremely moving, as Martin Sheen's character struggles to cope with his son's sudden death. The father is wrenched from his comfortable middle-class life in suburban American, hurled into motion by the news that his wayward 30-something son has died while undertaking an extreme pilgrimage on foot across 500 miles of Spanish mountains.
From then, the rural landscape becomes one of the central characters in the film; harsh, beautiful, threatening, supportive - and sensitively captured and revealed in a series of segments which follow Sheen's footsteps through rain, shine and suffering. He's joined by other pilgrims on the trail and encounters a cross-section of humanity at way-stations along the route.
`The Way' isn't entirely free of cultural stereotypes, So the Dutch pilgrim carries half a pharmacy of recreational chemicals around with him; the Irish writer is a fast-talking braggart; the gypsies dance by firelight and lean toward light-fingered habits but underneath are a sensitive, honourable people, and so on. But the Americans laugh at themselves, and the grieving father isn't portrayed as a kind of saint; his feet are made of clay, too. And he's man enough to admit it.

At the final resolution, `The Way' offers an affirmation of lives worth living, of the value of the journey for itself rather than mere dashing to a destination. It captures several moments of startling sorrow, and Sheen's performance should not be missed. But this is not a po-faced movie about religion, nor a self-indulgent dirge. There are plenty of lighter moments of laughter (and James Nesbitt gets one of the best introductory speeches we'd heard in a long while).
The delicate scenes between (real life) father and son Sheen and director Estevez are extremely poignant, too. They perfectly capture the intimate yet distant relationship between the generations.
Definitely a film not to miss.

9/10