THE WAY: FILM

THE WAY follows a father, played by Martin Sheen, as he walks the famous Camino de Santiago de Campostela, the way of St. James, a pilgrimage of some 480 km, beginning in the French Pyrenees, ending in Santiago, Spain, the burial tomb of St. James.  Tens of thousands of pilgrims make this walk each year (have been doing it for hundreds of years).  Martin Sheen's son, Emilio Estevez, has written and directed this film.

As the film begins, Sheen is an eye doctor in California, a typical work driven American, when he gets a call from the French police telling him that his son, from whom he's estranged, has died in a freak storm as he was beginning the pilgrimage.  Sheen then flies to France to gather the body, meets a Dutch pilgrim named Joost, decides to have his son cremated and honor him by making the pilgrimage in his son's place, spreading his ashes as he goes.  The rest of the film follows his journey, mostly inward, as he discovers not only his son but himself, the real self that had been buried by life's commitments and exigencies.

I cannot say I loved the film, as it was filled with cliches, the angry, arrogant American, out to prove something to himself.  I tired of Sheen's anger, his face, as he ignored his fellow pilgrims for most of the film, then suddenly has an epiphany, after getting drunk and disparaging his mates, totally ridiculous and predictable.  His mates, a jolly, joke cracking Dutchman, an Irish travel writer, and a Canadian women, complete the group.  Likened, though a stretch, to THE CANTERBURY TALES, we do eventually hear the stories of all four travelers.  The setting, the photography, the landscape of Spain is, however, the major character in this film, honest, beautiful, changing, and alive. It makes you want to jump on a plane and join them in the Pyrenees or small Basque towns.  The stops along the way, in various hostels, were often silly, with little interest or authenticity, just fillers made to show a particular side of a Spaniard or the ugly American.  Perhaps the problem was that we never liked Sheen, never believed his metamorphosis though we can empathize.  His fellow pilgrims were more interesting if he would allowed them in to his life.  The film took much to long for this to happen.

The journey ends, predictably, with Sheen, changed and alive at last, bosom buddies with his travel mattes, as they reach Santiago.  The last shot is of Sheen, traveling again, we assume, in Morocco, having found himself, a result of his son's death and his pilgrimage.  We are supposed to cheer his jettisoning of his inauthentic past, and embrace his living for the moment.  Whatever!

It did make me want to take this journey, as the film idealized the idea of just 'taking off,' saying screw you to the life of routine and habit, as Phillip Larkin describes in my favorite poem,  "Poetry of Departures."  But sometimes it's just as inauthentic as the life from which you fled.

Poetry of Departures

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.