“No
problem can be solved from the same
consciousness that created it.”- Albert Einstein
Throughout history, pilgrims from all over the
world including St. Francis of Assisi,
Charlemagne, Ferdinand and Isabella, Dante, and
Chaucer (not to mention Shirley MacLaine) have
walked the Santiago de Compostela Camino in
Spain, a 500-mile trek across highways,
mountains, valleys, and fields to seek a more
spiritual path in their life. Shot by Juan
Miguel Azpiros using only natural light, Emilio
Estevez' film, The Way starring Estevez' dad
Martin Sheen, provides both intimate and
panoramic views of the magnificent scenery of
the Basque country of Northern Spain including
the small villages, the quaint inns, and the
historic cathedrals as we walk the colorful road
with four travelers seeking a new beginning.
While on the golf course, Tom Avery (Sheen), a
well-to-do California ophthalmologist, receives
the shocking news that his son Daniel has been
killed in a storm while on a pilgrimage to the
Santiago de Compostela cathedral in Galicia,
Spain. In France to collect the remains of his
son, though over sixty, Avery decides to
undertake his own journey on the Camino to
finish the trek that Daniel began but could not
finish. Carrying his son's ashes in a metal box
and scattering them at key points along the way,
Avery begins his long walk with only Daniel's
backpack strapped to his back.
Estevez introduces three traveling companions
for Tom: Joost (Yorick van Wageningen, a
garrulous and somewhat overbearing Dutchman who
is doing the trek in order to lose weight (but
eats hefty meals along the way), Sarah (Deborah
Kara Unger), an angry and irritating feminist
from (of all places) Canada, the land of zero
charisma, and an egotistical travel writer who
introduces himself as Jack from Ireland (James
Nesbitt). None of these stock characters are
very likeable to say the least, but they do
enliven the trip in a series of forced incidents
seemingly designed for no other purpose than to
stave off an audience rebellion.
We listen to debates about what a “true
pilgrimage” is and one about the identity of
Basques. We are privy to a bizarre incident in
which an over-the-top innkeeper engaged in a
conversation with an imaginary woman, switching
chairs when responding (must have been in
Gestalt therapy). There are also hijinks with
Tom's backpack. First it drops from his hands
into rapids below him and is stolen by a gypsy
boy. If that isn't distracting enough, we
witness the taciturn doctor embark on a drunken
verbal rampage that often makes more sense than
what he says when he is sober.
The trek to Compostela has become a big part of
Europe's tourist industry and thousands of
travelers from every religion and walk of life
go each year regardless of the fact that the
walk is filled with many Catholic sites along
the way. The film, however, is top heavy in its
Christian tilt with Sarah delivering a
distraught anti-choice message, and the
travelers bowing to a sculpture of Sr. James in
the Compostela church, and shedding tears during
an incense ceremony. There are no religious
figures in the film except for a priest who, has
to wear a yarmulke to cover a scar on his scalp,
an ersatz Jewish aspect whose reason for being
is one of life's mysteries.
As we move on towards journey's end, each
character reveals their underlying reasons for
making the trip, but their sharing seems more
like a convenient plot device than real thoughts
and feelings coming from each traveler's
heart. While I welcome a film that does
not have sociopaths and psychopaths acting out
for our entertainment, The Way never seems to
get past a trite notion of what spirituality is
all about. Though it is a personal film for the
director and correctly points to people's need
to seek refuge from the technology that
dominates our lives, it tries too hard to be
profound while still directing its appeal to the
lowest common-denominator, testing our tolerance
for a script loaded with banalities, bathos,
manipulative crises, and false camaraderie.
True spirituality is not about seeking a way out
of problems such as smoking addiction, losing
weight, or getting past writers block but about
our relationship to the universe, a personal
vision that does not lie in books, rituals, or
icons, but in an inner experience of the
sacredness of life and in our power to transform
its quality at any moment. As Sioux Holy Man,
Black Elk expressed it, “The first peace, which
is the most important, is that which comes from
within the souls of men when they realize their
relationship, their oneness, with the universe
and all its powers, and when they realize its
center is really everywhere, it is within each
of us.”
GRADE: B-
