Pedantic ‘The Way’ is an Aimless Affair

“The Way” chronicles the travels of retired doctor Tom Avery (Martin Sheen) as he hikes the European religious pilgrimage along which his son died. In the process, he meets many other hikers also burdened by life’s travails, and comes to a renewed appreciation of his late estranged son. At least, that was clearly writer-director Emilio Estevez’s plan. What actually transpires is a cinematic travelogue that is heavy on the scenery and moralizing but light on genuine characterization and plot.

The movie begins with the death of Tom’s son Daniel, played by Estevez, Sheen’s real-life son. Flashbacks reveal the dysfunctional relationship between the two; Daniel’s desire to “see the world” clashes with his traditionalist father’s desire for him to complete his schooling. When Daniel dies unexpectedly in Spain on the treacherous Way of St. James, a Catholic pilgrimage ending at Santiago de Compostela, his father flies to Europe and is compelled to complete the trek his son began. Tom dons his deceased son’s gear, straps his son’s cremated remains to his pack, and begins the pilgrimage. Many will probably cringe at the thought of a father wearing his dead son’s T-shirts, socks, and underwear on a month-long walk from France to the western edge of Spain, but evidently this did not strike the screenwriter as overly macabre.

As Tom sets out on the Way of St. James, the focus of the movie shifts radically from his attempt to find closure for his difficult relationship with his son to a pedantic glorification of Tom as the archetype of a bygone American gentleman. This didactic conceit plays out in different ways with each pilgrim Tom encounters on the trail, as the elderly doctor gallantly tolerates and sometimes guides his fellow travelers, but never learns much from them.

The first of these is Joost (Yorick van Wageningen), a Dutchman from Amsterdam who is constantly looking for the next party. Joost’s wildness and youth contrast with the older Tom’s more staid, regimented approach to life. While the two characters would seem to have much to teach each other, neither one ever achieves any greater understanding of why their counterpart acts the way he does. A better film might have had Joost helping Tom to empathize with his son’s heterodox desire to travel rather than go to school, and also shown Tom’s disciplined nature rubbing off on Joost, which gives him the wherewithal to lose weight and get his careening life back on track. Instead, like most of the inhabitants of “The Way,” Joost is an unrealized caricature rather than a genuine character.

The second traveler Tom encounters is Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), a disillusioned and attractive 40-something. When they first meet, the embittered woman rails against the urbane Tom, condemning him for a variety of sins—from being a divorcé, to being the source of the current financial crisis, to owning an iPod. Tom takes this abuse from Sarah with romantic stoicism, and his good nature eventually leads to a melting of the ice between them. Sarah says she is traveling the Way of St. James to quit smoking, although she clearly has deeper reasons for taking the pilgrimage. However, her storyline proves frustratingly inconclusive—she doesn’t even manage to kick her smoking habit—and her character fails to relate to the death of Tom’s son in any serious way.

The final pilgrim in the film is Irish travel writer, Jack (James Nesbitt), who fills the niche of the resident crazed intellectual. When Jack learns of Daniel’s death from Tom, he takes Tom’s story as the perfect antidote for his writer’s block. The peripatetic travel author is obviously meant to serve as a stand-in for Daniel, and indeed, late in the film Tom suggests that Jack reminds him of his son. That throughout the movie, Jack is essentially gushing to Tom about the idea of using the plotline of “The Way” as the source material for a book feels just a touch self-congratulatory; like the character of Jack, the movie’s storyline is far too unidimensional to be deserving of any special notice.

In the end, while “The Way” has its share of funny moments and an abundance of beautiful scenery, it is wholly lacking when it comes to a cohesive plot. Characters meander on and off the screen without any real purpose, personal storylines are left hanging and unresolved, and Tom’s redemption quest suffers as a result of all of these flaws. Moreover, the script’s pandering pedagogy makes it hard even for an actor as estimable as Sheen to draw viewers in and have them identify with his character. Too often, the film seems to exploit the younger characters in its story to justify Tom’s arrogance and to praise the values of the older generation he supposedly represents. While this sort of sappy narrative may please the AARP crowd, most others are advised to steer clear.