Writers and movie buffs, listen up—you gotta see The Way.
If you’ve seen The Way, you’ll know that this is not the way to write a movie.
The Way shows us the way to write a story that just barely works. The Way is so close to being a colossal flop that it’s worth looking at it again.
What saved its sorry ass?
Hint—the final shot. It’s stuck on like the afterthought it might very well have been.
Premise: American ophthalmologist (Martin Sheen) learns that his son has died in Spain while hiking the 800 km pilgrimage known as “El Camino de Santiago”. Dad flies across the Atlantic to pick up the remains, where he decides to complete the trek in his son’s name.
Our protagonist had warned Daniel (Emilio Estevez) that seeing the world is a waste of time. Stay home! Finish your PhD! Career, responsibility, family, security, yada yada yada.
And, so, this sour misanthrope heads out on “The Way”… left, right, left, right, left…
It’s a road story. It’s a religious pilgrimage. Our hero has an iron-clad belief system–perfect! Left, right, left, right… Our hero is going to have a religious experience while walking the “Camino”, correct?
Wrong. This is a road story without an accident. A quest without a Holy Grail. What were they thinking?
I can just see Martin Sheen on the set of the movie. He’s flipping through the script. He takes Emilio aside (Emilio, the film’s writer-director, Martin’s real-life son) and he whispers in Emilio’s ear:
“Where’s the story, son?”
Or…
“Listen, son, I understand that the protagonist is carrying the torch for Daniel, that’s his motivation. But shouldn’t something else, like, you know, happen along the way?”
Or…
“Excuse me, O wise one, but I don’t see in the script where the protagonist adopts his second goal. I mean, only the most simple-minded action flick ends with the hero achieving nothing more than what caused him to leave home in Act One.”
And…
“Dammit, son, I’m an intransigent asshole at the beginning of this story…I can’t be an asshole at the end.”
I can imagine Martin Sheen taking charge…
“I should be forced to confront myself. That’s what a story IS, isn’t it? The hero’s attitude to life—it should evolve. Unless this is a tragedy, of course. Don’t tell me this is a tragedy. This story should crack me open. I’m supposed to grow up, that’s the whole idea.”
“But, Pops, the premise is a spiritual cliché. I’m downplaying the spiritual crap.”
“Call it what you want, but the protagonist must begin to see his life in a larger context. It’s a deal-breaker, son. We transcend ourselves. It’s the Holy Grail of plot.”
And then, a few weeks later, shooting the final scene, Martin Sheen again collars Emilio:
“Son, we can’t end the picture like this with me dumping Daniel’s ashes into the Atlantic. That’s no accomplishment. That’s exactly what the character set out to do. Boring! I’m still a grumpy, incommunicative, autocratic, scared and self-centred near-sighted narcissist. With blisters on my feet.”
And…
“If we roll the credits after I dump the ashes—and That’s all folks!—viewers are going to leave the theatre shrugging their shoulders. The ending has to prove that the events have begun to free the protagonist from the jail of his own belief system. Why do you think Zorba the Greek had a twinkle in his eye when he said, ‘Life is trouble!’
I can just see Emilio relenting:
“Okay, Pops! all right! all right! We’ll add a shot at the end. You’re in Morocco. You don’t return home. You’re traveling on. You’ve got an open mind, now. All right?”
“I’ve transcended myself.”
“You’re a free spirit, now. Like Daniel, your dead son.”
“That might work, Emilio. Barely. Just make sure I’m smiling, for chrissake. This whole movie I’m an asshole. Okay, son…let’s finish this sucker.”
“Roll camera!”
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
We humans are ‘hard-wired for story’ so Andrew Stanton tells us. It’s in our dna. So much so that even a three year old can tell when you’ve skipped reading part of a bedtime story. It’s gotta have all the parts or it’s not a story it’s a diary entry, or even worse, an exercise in ego-stroking! Guess what category I’m putting ‘the way’ into now, after reading your post PJ? Yep, that’d be the ‘no way I’m spending money on a movie ticket for it’ category!! Ha
Thanks, Yvette… you could, of course, treat “The Way” like a travelogue. All that hiking through Spain… it’s almost worth the price of admission. But that three-year-old you speak of would no doubt be bored out of her little skull.
Even in admired, as opposed to examples of the worst, works of cinematic , or other, fiction, the story, like life itself, unfolds like and uncontrollable unreality in which we are misdirected players part of the time, held together only by disrupted probabilities that create ‘space’ to move even if events and directions are illusions. But we live always in anticipation even if of an Armegeddon event. As observers we hope we are entitled to our expectations of some form of artistic ‘closure’ in observed fictions such as movies. But that may be unrealistic under conditions where expectations are not imminent in a direct and focused personal sense. Even in Wagner’s Ring cycle it’s necessary to go through three (or is it four) ‘scores’ of musical dramas to come near The Twilight Of The Gods. Just before that nihilistic non-ending to your horrible fiction, a deathly movie, Das Riengeld is surely past, but the Valkeries are still riding, and riding, and riding………. “What is this?” we ask in confusion as we look about and within (“It could be our fault!” we imagine in fear.) for the absence that has no meaning. Movie critics exist not so that we can be serial masochists, and watch the damn thing twice or thrice or more, but rather so that we can avoid it completely in the first instance. That’s why movie critics, and even some Blogmeisters, get paid to divert us away from movies that could make us think and cause us pain.
‘“What is this?” we ask in confusion as we look about and within (“It could be our fault!” we imagine in fear) for the absence that has no meaning.’
I wish that “The Way” had impressed me with such a question. And if it left you with that feeling, then I applaud your take on the film. I just found the Martin Sheen character to be inexplicably misanthropic. As for your assessment of film reviews that “divert us away from movies that could make us think and cause us pain,” I would be the first to regret such a thing. And if mine committed that crime, I’m sorry. Perhaps I should take another look at “The Way” and reconsider.
I had another strong response by email from a reader who didn’t believe the film needed to be resolved with any kind of self-transcendence. He said:
“Whether or not the pilgrim attains his spiritual goals at the end is open to question. Some perhaps do and some don’t. Maybe it’s a bit like Chief Dan George going up to the mountain to die and only getting rained on instead. As he says to Little Big Man, “My son, some times the medicine works and sometimes it doesn’t.” or as Scripture tells us, ‘The Wind of the Spirit blows where ever it will’.
I like that, a lot. I just wish the Martin Sheen character had said something half as interesting. A film that sets itself up to be a “story” has the obligation to continue to be such. In retrospect, I wish the film had been a documentary. I could have learned about the nature of a pilgrimage. From these two responses, I have learned much.
I’m forgetful in my aged existence. Greater attendance to what I write could make my effort easier.
I must confess, dear blogmeister, that upon your observations I made no attempt to see even once the movie called “The Way”, as I trust your artistic (a tempest of sneezes is passing through: good brandy always does that to me) perceptions. I will digress to a graduate seminar of ages past in which a fellow student said to me after a third unmeeting of minds that if to try to understand the author had become masochistic, it was time to stop trying. I don’t believe in masochism as a path to any form of enlightenment apart from ceasing to try so I stopped trying.
I am content with my decision not to attempt to view said movie based on your assessment which I have always trusted in such matters. Give yourself some credit for fools like me!
Succinctly, it is my belief that you, your unnamed commentator, and me, are all on the same page. Agreement is never necessary, but I strongly believe that we are all on the same page.
Take a clean piece of paper and fold it twice into equal portions and tape the loose ends. Either flat or on end it is the same page with three sides. There is a lot of room for what one choses to believe or not believe on ‘the same page’ that has three sides. I chose to believe that we see the same thing from different perspectives, even if I, on your sage perception, didn’t look as deeply as you would have wished.
I have a brief example of my own experience of this, I think, unusual phenomenon. In literature almost anything can work. Hemmingway wrote at least 40 endings to “A Farewwell To Arms.” John Fowles wrote at least two endings to “The French Lieutenant’s Woman.” I think Hemmingway and Fowles brought it off well. But in my life I was asked, and paid very well, to edit a novel for a publishing company prior to it being accepted for publication. Twice I asked for a rewrite of the ending because the ‘non-ending’ made no sense (at least to me), and twice the manuscript was returned to me with inconsequential changes in punctuation. I fely angry, and that’s not good. I recommended that the novel which did have a story within be shelved from publication until the ending bore some relationship to 99% of the rest of the novel. I have no regrets.
The movie, The Way was a big disappointment. Silly impersonations of Canadians, Dutch and Irish. To me it looked like a big reveal of the Sheen family’s typically American attitude to non-Americans. Especially with regards to the Canadian gal. What struck me as absurd was how each character drank and smoked their way through the whole ‘pilgrimage’ without any sign of self-examination or attempt at discipline. It made me wonder if the director himself had any idea of what a life journey or pilgrimage is all about. All I could see were sleepy people making a film about something they knew nothing about.
I see the point made by anon about not ‘succeeding’ in attaining one’s goal when making such a pilgrimage. That in itself would be an interesting subject to explore, but The Way didn’t explore anything. A truly superficial movie.