The film unfolds over a few weeks, after Tom Avery (Martin
Sheen), an emotionally frozen widowed ophthalmologist, learns in California of
the death of his only son Daniel (Estévez, who also wrote the screenplay), in
the French Pyrenees, on the first day of his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. On an impulse, after identifying Daniel’s
body in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, he begins the trip himself, intending to walk the
800 kms of the way treaded since the Middle Ages along northern Spain, running
through the Basque Country, Castile, Asturias and Galicia, culminating in
Santiago de Compostela, in whose magnificent cathedral the Apostle James is
buried.
“You don’t choose a life, you live one”, the son, a gentle
soul who wanted to see the world, had told the father. A series of efficient flashbacks quickly set
up the background story, a familiar one of paralyzing comfort zones versus
wanderlust and restlessness, of parents and children clashing over sharply
opposing views about a life well lived.
The Way is really
three journeys, centered around the question Tom is forced to ask himself by
reliving his son’s quest, and literally wearing his trekking shoes and carrying
his gear: What does it take to “see”?
The first journey is geographical, shot in stunning and picturesque locations
along the Camino de Santiago; the second one emotional, and it involves the slow
process of the protagonist’s thawing, in the company of a broken humanity – a
Canadian woman scarred by an abortion, an Irish writer with a major block, a
gluttonous Dutch, and a motley crew in the background, complete with gypsies, a
Catholic priest and Spaniards playing second fiddle. The third journey is, unsurprisingly, the
journey of life, seen through the lens, quite opaque at times, of a Catholic
imagination.
The first two journeys of The Way are somewhat predictable.
The varied adventures on the geographical road, and the gradual melting
of a fossilized heart unfold without much surprise, shaped by genre
conventions. But what keeps the film on
its toes, I think, is the way the third journey evolves: walking on the long,
solitary, winding roads is both an ascesis – a discipline of the body – and an ascent
from a life of blind living to a new, transcendental, form of “seeing”. My quotes on the protagonist’s profession
obvious as the ones in the film – an “ophthalmologist” in a road adventure that
results in a conversion of the heart, a more humane way of “seeing”.
Since The Way plays
the cards of this third meaning close to the vest, it requires that the viewers
pay close attention to how the act of walking and talking becomes an act of
redemption for all the characters, of which they are unaware until they reach
their destination. If the audience is not invested in what is at stake – how to
live a meaningful, mindful and connected life – the film will seem to lack
punch, a mere travelogue through quaint northern Spain. But if we appreciate the camera quietly
absorbing the beauty of nature, stone buildings and delicately carved statues
it is constantly seeking out, then we can see that reality – geographically and
man-made - is treated sacramentally, that is, as signs pointing out to the
transcendental. This use of reality as a
jumping point is rendered in purely visual terms, not through words or actions,
and becomes more and more obvious to the attentive eye as this story of
ascension unfolds.
The climax is set in the Cathedral of Santiago de
Compostela. The sacred place marks not the successful end of the journey
(reaching the sea, the very last scene of The
Way, is really a coda), but also the rebirth of Tom Avery and the healing
of his three emotionally damaged fellow walkers, now his friends. The documentary-style footage of the swinging
botafumeiro, the thurible that
literally spews incense fumes across the immense nave, celebrates the pilgrims’
arrival and prefigures their new life.
What may make this film somewhat ambiguous for a person of
faith is that the protagonist, a man of science and a lapsed Catholic, does not
enter into a radical encounter with a Thou – the God of the Jewish-Christian
tradition. But the physical and emotional rigors of the road have so shaken Tom
out of his complacence (so many encounters like this in the Gospels), that he
reenters life through his son, now dead but still with him in the journey, like
in a Ford movie. The hopeful ending of The Way points to the time-honored
Christian view of life, as a road to travel in search of our lasting home.
Perhaps too touristy at times in its travel anecdotes, or
spread a little too thin in its spiritual implications, The Way invites the viewer to see life from the lens of a broken
man, who numbly picks up his cross and follows an unknown road, slowly connecting
with the living and the dead. Viewed as a whole, the film is an unspoken
instance of the communion of the saints – a powerful aspect of the Catholic
imagination.
Tout est grâce …
