movies
BY RICK LEVIN
A Pilgrim’s Progress
Martin Sheen brings gravity, direction to The Way
THE WAY: Directed by Emilio Estevez.
Written by Estevez, based on Jack Hitt’s
book Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down
the Pilgrim’s Route. Cinematography, Juan
Miguel Azpiroz. Editor, Raul Davalos. Music,
Tyler Bates. Starring Martin Sheen, Emilio
Estevez, Deborah Kara Unger, James Nesbitt,
Yorick can Wageningen. Arc Entertainment,
2011. PG-13. 123 minutes. 44421
A
well-to-do American widower — an
ophthalmologist of mild but stern
temperament, very set in his ways
— is out golfi ng when he receives a call from
Paris informing him that his only son has died
while hiking the medieval trail from France to
Spain’s Santiago de Compostella, a Christian
pilgrimage also known as “the Way.” The
father fl ies abroad to retrieve his son’s body,
but once in France he decides to complete his
son’s journey, spreading his ashes along the
route. During the pilgrimage, this sheltered
man’s spiritual blindness is cured by a series
of encounters, and what began as a father’s
duty ends in enlightenment and forgiveness.
This, minus a few idiosyncratic character
sketches, is the rough outline of Emilio
Estevez’s solid new fi lm, entitled —
innocently, arrogantly — The Way. The movie
is as pat as it is predictable, like Rocky slurping
Chicken Soup for the Soul.
As a fi lmmaker, Estevez’s ambitions far
outpace his abilities, which is not to say he
can’t make a perfectly watchable fi lm (unlike
Ron Howard, whose ambition overwhelms
his intelligence at every turn). In fact, despite
its hand-fed and occasionally ham-fi sted
symbolism — an eye doctor who can’t “see,”
playing golf (“a good walk spoiled,” Twain
joked), etc., etc. — and despite a few creaks
and groans of shrink-wrapped sentimentality,
The Way is a good fi lm. It succeeds against
nearly impossible odds, and overcomes its
own obstacles on the way to, yes, inspiration.
Martin Sheen helps, of course. Martin
Sheen always helps. Those same qualities
that made Sheen such a plausible, seductively
vulnerable U.S. president in Aaron Sorkin’s
‘90s television series The West Wing also, it
turns out, make him a lovely travel companion;
he is centered even when a mess, affable
yet wry, intelligent, acerbic, charismatic and
something of a human magnate, pulling the
most off-kilter and interesting people into his
immediate, albeit reluctant, orbit.
While Charlie Sheen was off “winning,”
it appears Sheen’s other son, Estevez, was
busying himself with the more modest fare
of making movies, and casting his father
as The Way’s Tom Avery (Estevez plays
Avery’s dead son, Daniel, in fl ashbacks and
daydreams) was a masterstroke.
Estevez, who also wrote the screenplay,
adds some tasteful touches to an otherwise
stock story of redemption. He is canny enough
to leaven the spiritually fraught proceedings
with moments of humor. The dialogue of the
expatriate is depicted with precision and wit,
as is the occasional fear that can fl are when
weary travelers encounter unfamiliar cultures.
And Avery’s withdrawal from religious faith
is treated with subtlety. When a priest asks
Tom, kneeling in the chapel, if he’d like to
pray with him, Sheen remarks bluntly, with
rhetorical disgust: “What for?”
The Way does contain a sprinkling of
cheese — a Gypsy conveniently named
Ishmael, for instance — but for the most
part, Estevez resists plucking every available
heartstring. His real strength as a director is
economy and clarity.
In the end, however, The Way is Martin
Sheen’s fi lm, and he carries it expertly
with every step. Even at this relatively late
stage in his career, he remains one of our
most recognizable but underrated actors,
inhabiting that twilit category (i.e., no Oscar)
that once boasted names like Eastwood and
Bridges. There has always been something
existentially compelling about Sheen — an
essential American-ness — that naturally
draws him to fi lms about journeys.
In movies like Apocalypse Now and
especially Terrence Malick’s Badlands,
Sheen embodied the kind of prideful, reckless
abandon of the innocent that so defi nes this
country, be it the Vietnam commander sent
into insanity’s heart of darkness or the romantic
nihilist hitting the road in the name of love,
murder and celebrity. Behind those piercing
eyes and warm good looks, now grown a bit
jowly, there hides a hunger for what can only
be called purity and truth. In The Way, Sheen
— a tangle of hurt and yearning — brings this
mysterious hunger front and center, where it
growls with paternal obligation and need. It’s
a great performance that may, at long last,
bump him into a higher realm of recognition,
where he belongs.
ew
The Way opens Dec. 2 at Bijou Cinemas; info & times at bijou.com
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EUGENE WEEKLY DECEMBER 1, 2011 23