‘The Way,’ a moving father/son tale

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Martin Sheen stars in ?The Way,? a film about a father who, in his mission to collect his son?s remains in the Pyrenees, embarks on the historical pilgrimage, called The Way of Saint James, to honor his son?s desire to finish the journey and discovers much along the trek.

Emilio Estevez directs his father, Martin Sheen, in a film about love, loss, and fathers and sons.

By Bryan Buss / Special to The Malibu Times

In Malibu resident IEmilio Estevez’s latest directorial and screenwriting effort, “The Way,” he guides his father, Martin Sheen, to subtle heights as a grieving father.

When Daniel Avery (Estevez) is killed in a freak storm traversing the Camino de Santiago—a pilgrimage from the French Pyrenees to a cathedral near the Atlantic shore of Spain that for many is a spiritual undertaking, a way of finding themselves—his father, successful ophthalmologist Tom Avery (Sheen), flies to France to retrieve Daniel’s body and ends up taking the trek his son was undertaking to spread his ashes.

With the historical Camino de Santiago acting as his own yellow brick road, Tom assembles an eclectic coterie of companions: a caustic Canadian (the always assured Deborah Kara Unger); a healthy, hungry Dutchman (Yorick van Wageningen) and an Irishman suffering writer’s block (James Nesbitt), each of whom is on their own personal journey. As Tom opens up to the world outside the confines of his country club life, he also comes to understand his hippie son’s intentions: to experience the world, not just the life we choose so much as the life we live. When Tom and friends finally reach their destination, they realize they’re not ready to say goodbye, to return to the real world, whatever that is for each of them.

Estevez often works with his family members (having already directed Emmy winner Sheen in the Robert Kennedy assassination drama “Bobby” and Vietnam-era “The War at Home”), but “The Way” is a family affair spanning three generations. Estevez’s now-27-year-old son with his ex-wife Carey Salley, Taylor, while driving the Camino with Sheen in 2003, met and fell in love with a woman who would later become his wife. While Taylor doesn’t appear in the film, and it doesn’t tell his story, Estevez and Sheen were so inspired by Taylor’s experience and the Camino and its historical significance that they were moved to create a film about it.

Estevez has shown great skill as a director and as a screenwriter before this, but he is more certain than ever. His ear for dialogue and his sense for letting a scene breathe have matured so as to steep “The Way” in its own hushed beauty. There are no special effects, no pratfalls, no quirks or gimmicks, just people looking for connections with other people. And with Sheen playing Estevez’s father, there is an extra element of poignancy to his role as a parent who has lost a child.

The supporting characters could easily have been stock, but in reality they’re as acutely drawn as Tom. Van Wageningen’s talky Dutchman could have simply been bumbling comic relief, but he imbues his humor with pathos, and Unger’s sarcastic smoker—who, in a lesser film, would have been cast in the light of a standard-issue love interest—transforms seamlessly from angry know-it-all to earnest and loyal companion.

The score by Tyler Bates, who also scored Estevez’s TV flick, “Rated X,” is befittingly mellow, the cinematography captures both the beauty of Europe and the loneliness of the road, and the actors are pitch perfect under Estevez’s sure hand. The film does run a little long, but the ambling pace enables the power of the story to build in an understated way. Hollywood films rarely handle matters of friendship, let alone spirituality, with such sensitivity and soulfulness. The bonds Tom forms with his three companions are moving, the kind of fierce, easy, lifelong connections you make when you’re all out of your element and yet moving toward the same—yet very different—goal.