Movie: The Way

“The Way” is the story of Tom (Sheen), a widower, sometime Catholic and a Malibu dentist, whose son, Daniel (Estevez), decides to leave his doctorate behind and see the world.

As Tom drives Daniel to the airport, he scolds him for not taking his place in the world. Daniel answers that he needs to find what that place is and gently suggests that his dad might do the same.

Not long after, Tom’s golf game is interrupted by a call with the news that Daniel has died in a small town in the French Pyrenees. Tom leaves immediately to bring his son’s body home. But once there, a kind police detective informs him that in this remote town his son was about to leave on a spiritual pilgrimage to the medieval shrine of Santiago de Compostela, where many believe the relics of St. James the Apostle are interred.

Tom has Daniel’s remains cremated and then decides that the two of them together will make this journey, which is also called pilgrimage, the way, or camino. People make this camino for different reasons but Tom has little idea of what he is in for or where he is going. He packs the tin with Daniel’s ashes in the rucksack the young man had prepared, and starts off.

On the first or second morning, after a terrible night’s sleep in a hostel, Tom drops the knapsack in a river and becomes thoroughly drenched fighting the current to retrieve it. It’s a cleansing, a rebirth, a humbling baptism for Tom as he begins his journey.

Along the way he collects three people, or characters, that hook their destiny to his: Joost (Yorick van Wageningen), a jovial Dutchman who travels with recreational pharmaceuticals and wants to lose weight so his wife won’t reject him; Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), a Canadian who says she is on the camino to stop smoking; and Jack (James Nesbitt), a chatty Irish novelist who has lost his creative spark. Tom avoids them when he can but after he has a spectacular meltdown in public and Jack puts up his bail, they continue together.

It looks like an amazing movie, I hope it makes it to New Zealand. If it doesn't, I'll be buying it from Amazon.

Interview: On 'The Way' with Martin Sheen.
A highlight of this interview is that he talks about the part he played in Apocalypse Now was himself and how he's changed from that person.