In many religious traditions, to speak of “The Way” often means to refer to a spiritual path. This path, as in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress can be physically and spiritually arduous. Christians around the world think of Jesus and “the Way of the Cross.”
“The Way” also refers to the famous medieval pilgrimage route that begins in the French Pyrenees and ends hundreds of miles later in the town of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain. The Camino, as it is called, has hosted millions of pilgrims over the centuries and has become a place of insight and healing for countless Christians and non-Christians alike.
One of those pilgrims in 2003 was Martin Sheen, the actor of “The West Wing” fame. Together with his 19 year old grandson, Taylor, he sought to experience something of the mystery of this journey, something his Spanish-born father had often spoken about. Though the two did not have time to walk the entire Camino, their journey proved profound for both (Taylor even met his future wife!). When Sheen returned to Southern California, he recounted the experience to his filmmaker son, Emilio Estevez, in the hope that he would make a movie based on the powerful spiritual transformation one can experience walking the path of St. James (“Santiago”, in Spanish).
The Way, which had its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 2010 and opened in theaters in the Fall of 2011, is the result of that conversation. Lyrically filmed along the pilgrimage route, the movie is on one level about a place, a several hundred mile long foot path for pilgrims. The sights, sounds, and textures along the way serve almost as a “character” in themselves. The photography is beautiful, and the outposts prove compelling in their simple sincerity. But like all “road trip” movies, it is not the setting or even the plot that carries the weight of the movie. Indeed, The Way has only a slight plot – just enough to get two “buddies” on the road and concluding once their trip has proven enlightening. But this bare bones plot is enough. What is of real importance in the movie is what the characters learn en route, their personal pilgrimage toward insight and wholeness as they travel along “The Way.” Here is the compelling power of Estevez’ movie.
The story begins with a father and son having a somewhat strained conversation. Tom, an optometrist played by Sheen himself, is driving his son to the airport, telling him, “The life I live might not seem to be much, but it’s the life I choose.” Only for his son, Daniel (Emilio Estevez) to counter, “You don’t choose a life, dad. You live one.” Daniel is off to Europe, fed up with his graduate studies in cultural anthropology. He no longer wants to study culture, but be immersed in it.
What neither knows is that this will be their last conversation. Daniel is killed in a freak snowstorm as he surprisingly begins the pilgrim’s walk in the French Pyrenees. When Tom is called with the sad news, his world changes forever. Going to retrieve Daniel’s body, he feels compelled to try better to understand the son he has lost. What was it that his son wanted to experience?
In an attempt to find out, Tom will finish the pilgrimage that his son began. As Tom takes the ashes of his son along with him, this “buddy” movie becomes the trek of a “father and son”, a journey of identity and transformation. Tom begins his trek “alone” (except, of course, with the ashes and constant memory of his son whose figure he continues to see). But he is soon thrown together with three other pilgrims – a Canadian woman, an Irishman, and an affable Dutchman.
As we enter into the stories of these diverse pilgrims, a story that might otherwise feel more narrow or even isolated (if it were just Tom’s) becomes broadened. Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger) is abrasive and obviously wounded, wanting to keep everyone at arm’s length. But confronting her pain helps Tom uncover his own pain. Jack, a travel journalist with writer’s block, drinks to numb his own personal demons. But his description of the Way as a metaphor helps not only his fellow travelers, but we as film viewers to better understand the significance of the trek. And Joost, ostensibly on the pilgrimage to exercise and lose weight before his wedding, continues to hide his own insecurities behind his love of food and his joviality. Yet his presence adds light and humor for us all.
As each of these enters in his or her own way, so all of us as viewers find ourselves invited to join these pilgrims on the Way. For all of us also have our own sense of need. All of us, if we are honest, are on a spiritual search, even those who do not label it explicitly religious. There is a universal appeal to the movie’s quest, and a universal invitation to embark on its path.
Some reviewers have been quick to point out that these four fellow pilgrims seem reminiscent of those in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, where a group of 14th-century pilgrims tell tales while traveling to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Yes, The Way is a similar “on-the-road” movie, a critical portrait of our confused and confusing times. But perhaps the better comparison is with the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz. Just as Dorothy found herself on the yellow brick road with three idiosyncratic friends after a tornado lifted her out of her Kansas routine, so Tom is lifted out of his humdrum existence by the shock of his son’s death and finds himself with three unlikely pilgrims as they walk the road, each searching for meaning and wholeness in their lives.
For all, the pilgrimage along El Camino de Santiago ends at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. There, every day at noon, throngs of pilgrims who have completed their journey attend the Pilgrim’s Mass. After the final blessing, the botafumeiro, a gigantic incense burner that is hoisted aloft on ropes by men dressed in medieval costume, is flung from side to side in the cathedral, filling the sanctuary with a cloud of sweet fragrance as worshippers cheer. Though this had never before been filmed, Estevez was granted permission to use the ritual in his film, and this worship experience proves climatic.
As with other road movies, there is a final “wrap-up” to the story. In this case the pilgrims continue their trek a few miles to the Atlantic where the remaining ashes of Daniel are scattered. But it is the sacred space of the Cathedral that provides the film its transcendent center.
My wife, Cathy, and I have traveled to Santiago de Compostela and have attended the Pilgrim’s Mass. Estevez has captured its power and mystery well. Not all the pilgrims come for explicit Christian worship. Not all would identify themselves as even seeking a “spiritual” experience, though by the time most have walked the path where millions of pilgrims have gone before them, their spirits have been quickened. But all who come as pilgrims are seekers and find themselves part of a transcendent mystery that is larger than them. The movie captures the power of this Spiritual presence well.
In The Way the pilgrimage is allowed largely to speak for itself. Its power to bring reconciliation and peace is observed by the filmmaker with sympathetic eyes. And we are invited, as viewers, to observe sympathetically as well. Here is a movie to enjoy and ponder. And for some, perhaps, the movie is an invitation to join these pilgrims on The Way. It was for my wife and me.