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2011, 09-15 ( = opens 10-7-11):
Review of film: “THE WAY” + Q&A with MARTIN SHEEN & EMILIO ESTEVEZ
This movie is based on a bunch of TRUE incidents / happenings...
... Tom (MARTIN SHEEN) is a doctor who’s been displeased at the way his 40-ish son, -- (played by his real-life son EMILIO ESTEVEZ), has been “DISTANT”, uncommunicative & at times a sort of “RABBLE-ROUSER” -- especially in recent years...
... His office assistant tells how Emilio had called while was out, but, no, as Martin surmised, he did NOT leave any number where Martin could call him BACK...
... A day later, Martin has joined various friends for a round of golf... His assistant calls him on the course to relay some NEWS she’d just gotten from France: Emilio had just DIED in a small town in the far south of the country...
... Very distressed, Martin immediately arranges to FLY to the area to bring his son home for burial...
... In the small French town of St. Jean Pied de Port, he talks with the policeman who’d called him with the news...
... Martin is told that Emilio had accidentally died after he’d started off on a sort of PILGRIMAGE journey called “THE WAY OF ST. JAMES”, wherein people walk thru the Pyrenees mountains in France & then west in Spain, following the reported “route” of the afore-named Saint...
... The policeman said, he himself had made the journey down The Camino de Santiago a number of times, & intended to do it AGAIN...
... He tries to explain that, some people do it for motives outside of strict “religious” reasons, to show they can FOLLOW-THRU on something difficult & taxing...
... Martin knew that Emilio -- like he himself -- had not been actively religious for a number of years... But, wanting to try to KNOW his estranged son better, he (a onetime Catholic) changes his plans to take Emilio’s body home:
... Instead, he decides to have Emilio cremated & to scatter his ASHES (from a tin he’d carry) along the ROUTE Emilio had planned to take...
... Instead, he decides to have Emilio cremated & to scatter his ASHES (from a tin he’d carry) along the ROUTE Emilio had planned to take...
... He does not want other people to LEARN of his sort of “quest” as he begins the ardous 497-mile (= 800 km) journey to the south & west...
... Along the way, Martin encounters a number of memorable people... One of the first is a very heavyset outgoing DUTCH guy named – (YORICK VAN WAGENINGEN). The man is very talkative & “open” about how he wants to lose weight to “impress” his wife back home, etc...
... Martin really doesn’t want to be “BOTHERED” by --. He finds him “boring” & overly friendly & inquisitive, & he tries to “IGNORE” him whenever possible as they follow along the same long route... But, the guy seems to be SINCERE in all his words, actions & attitude...
... Later, as they periodically meet up in segments along the journey, they also meet other people on the same expedition... One is a strangely unpleasant & antagonistic Canadian woman named – (DEBORAH KARA UNGER)...
... Deborah smokes a lot (& claims she’ll quit that habit after she reaches the END of the trip)... She seems to be an UNHAPPY person who tends to “RAG” on others a lot, which causes Martin to initially try to steer CLEAR of being around her whenever possible...
... Often-“private” Martin especially dislikes the way she keeps prying into WHY he’s on the journey -- & he’s quite peeved by the way YORICK (who’d seen him scattering Emilio’s ashes) TELLS her his “private” business about that...
... During the long trip, Martin keeps seeing what seems to be the ghost of EMILIO who talks to him at various times along the path...
... While that tends to be upsetting in certain ways, it also gives him some added “INSIGHT” into the person Emilio had become while they’d been physically & emotionally apart from each other...
... Late in the journey, they meet a sort of “oddball” IRISHMAN named – (JAMES NESBITT). He’s a writer who hoped the trip would help him recover from the dreaded “block” he was suffering in his chosen profession...
... James soon becomes a “REGULAR” in traveling the Road with Martin, Yorick & Deborah...
... Would Martin ever “relax” enough to really “OPEN-UP”to his main traveling companions?... What will happen when someone STEALS Martin’s backpack & Emilio’s ashes?...
... What happens to the lives of each of the “pilgrims” when they reach the planned END of the trip? Would they succeed in the “CHANGES” they’d hoped to make in how they lived?...
... Would MARTIN find the greater UNDERSTANDING about Emilio that he’d hoped to acquire by making the journey?...
... The movie was shot along the actual LOCATION of The Camino de Santiago, from beginning to end (& “beyond”)... Most of the route is sort of boring scenery-wise, tho there are some beautiful CHURCHES & “activities” they encounter in some of the larger towns along the way...
... The major actors do a quite GOOD job in their roles, all of them being very BELIEVABLE in “inhabiting” their characters...
... While this is far from any “action” movie (being quite the “opposite”), it’s clearly a HEARTFELT enterprise by those involved, &, in large part because of that, I’m rating it at 8.00 of 10 stars...
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Q&A with MARTIN SHEEN & EMILIO ESTEVEZ
AFTER the advance screening, the audience was pleased to have an in-person Q&A TALK by MARTIN & EMILIO (the latter whom had DIRECTED the film), hosted by a Sister of some order...
... As Emilio related, they had been traveling on a BUS pilgrimage around the country promoting the film, & this was their stop # 13 of a scheduled 35... And yes, the bus they’re riding in is OUTSIDE the AMC21 River East theater [as I later saw was the case when I left the theater]...
... A person in the audience commented, “I did the Camino... And you CAPTURED it PERFECTLY!”, which the stars were very pleased to hear...
... Emilio & Martin talked about how the pilgrimage has been made by people since at least the MIDDLE AGES... Some of the cathedral roofs they’d filmed are so elevated, you might risk suffering VERTIGO if you shoot film from up high in them...
... Yes, people at times did actually STAY in the cathedrals during their long journey, &, since personal HYGIENE was never practiced much then, people easily tended to “stink up the joint”, & part of the INCENSE used since olden times (such as in a memorable scene in the film) was to work to FRESHEN-UP the place...
... Regarding that scene of pulling a huge incense burner back & forth, their filming it was the FIRST time the church had ever allowed it to be shot outside of a NEWS-making purpose (& was done thanks to a “contact” of theirs who convinced the elders there of the SINCERITY of their film-making effort)...
... Martin [whose birth name was Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez] related how his own late father had GROWN UP around 80 miles from the area where they’d filmed, & (if I recall correctly what was said) he’d left the region for the U.S. when he was around 19...
... The fact his dad came from there that was one of the reasons he wanted to film in the region, around the birthplace of his dad...
... When he was asked what had led to doing the STORY the movie covers, Martin related some of the details:
... In 2003, he was on HIATUS from filming his TV role as President Josiah “Jed” Bartlett in “THE WEST WING”... He wanted to do something “special”, & decided to try to celebrate the area’s overriding historic importance of the Camino there...
... Thus, Martin went with Emilio’s son TAYLOR to that area on a vacation, & they’d spent 2 weeks TRAVELING along the trail, mainly in Spain...
... On his 2003 trip, they started around BURGOS, having that as a “central” area... While there, Taylor met a Spanish woman from the Camino region whom he MARRIED, & they’ve LIVED in Spain since then!...
... Martin seemingly had an American FRIEND who’d actually walked the WHOLE Camino-- tho he hadn’t done it with a BACKPACK...
... For Martin, shooting in the area where his own father had grown up was sort of like living thru “an emotional ‘TORPEDO’” at times...
... An audience member brought up the subject of the role Deborah played of a woman who had a lot of bitterness because ’d lost her BABY in the past, & wondered if her part had been written to “give a voice to the UNBORN”... Seemingly there was no “agenda” in the story-telling...
... Martin indicated that filming with his own son (in the area where his own dad had lived) gave him a sort of feeling of “KINDRED SPIRITS”...
... One person wondered if, when people GO on the actual Pilgrimage there, do they tend to be the same person they started out as, by the time they reach the END of the journey?...
... An audience member felt, seeing the movie was like GOING on a “spiritual JOURNEY”... One person told of having “celebrated MASS” in the area there...
... Another person in the theater commented that, he wanted to “applaud you for [making] a GREAT film”, which Martin & Emilio much appreciated...
... Martin told how they’d recently shown the film IN the area of Spain where it’d been filmed...
... The current POPE [Benedict] had also been in the area before the film was screened like 3 blocks from a Cathedral where they’d filmed, & the screening was attended by the President of the GALICIA region of Spain there, which they felt honored by...
... One of the people in our audience commented that, “This film is a GIFT—”...
... A person spoke of meeting some guy named Curtis who’d told her about today’s screening, & she was very GLAD she’d come to it-- it had “sounded awesome”, & had indeed come ACROSS that way to her!...
... In fact, she feels people seeing it will ADD to the number of PILGRIMS who go to visit the area of the Camino.... Martin said, it was beautiful to hear words like that...
... Words were spoken about having shown the film in IRELAND in May, & Emilio was pleased to see that it drew a very FAVORABLE reaction... We were told that people from Ireland make up the 2nd largest group of people who GO on the Camino pilgrimage...
... In fact, Martin heard from the President of Ireland [Mary McAleese] that her own DAUGHTER is going as a pilgrim to the Camino, in part because the journey “INSPIRES people” in various ways...
... An Afro-American lady said, the movie caused her to keep thinking of her own MOTHER at the time she’d passed on. She wondered, what was the inspiration for doing the movie as they did?...
... Emilio spoke of his grandfather’s being from there, & how the movie was shot in chronological SEQUENCE (which is unusual for films)...
... It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment idea for HIM to appear at times as if a “ghost” that Martin sees... They both really LIKED that idea, especially because it gave them an opportunity to show how people who LEAVE us physically oftentimes “are still by our SIDE” as memories inside of us...
... Emilio said he just “JUMPED-IN” periodically whenever he could– namely, when he had some time in the midst of directing the film...
... I think it was Emilio who said, “I believe in the resurrection of the BODY... Seeing the ashes shows the [EXAMPLE] of that...”
... Martin commented that his character is not a PRACTICING Catholic-- he’s “LAPSED”, &, until he starts on the pilgrimage, he’s not aware of just how MUCH he’d gotten away from his old teachings...
... Continuing, Martin said, “We’re not making any JUDGMENTS [about him as a person]... He’s following his HEART... [He] didn’t think of that possibility [that the journey might CHANGE him as a person]... [He] sees beings [he meets along the way] as ‘DIFFERENT’ creatures [than him]...”
... Emilio said he feels Martin’s character is UNAWARE of the changes that seem to be growing inside him... If I recall correctly, he felt Martin was doing what he did in part as a way of keeping a memory of his own PARENTS & their teachings to him “alive”...
... Some thoughts about making a trip to the Camino area were entertained all the way back around 1995...
... Emilio spoke about how he came to insert HIMSELF as a character into Martin’s JOURNEY along the Camino, saying in part: “... The first time we really collaborated [on the route], it was MARTIN’S idea...”
... Furthermore, the scene of Martin’s having his backpack holding his son’s ashes fall from a bridge into the RIVER was an idea Martin had...
... As was the idea that he needed to go INTO the river to try to RETRIEVE the pack...
... Emilio commented about Martin, “All of a sudden, at 70 years old, he wants to be an ‘ACTION’ star!...”, to which Martin laughed heartily (as did the audience)...
... Emilio spoke of how he had to “remind” Martin that he needed to be IN the film at its END!.. But, it was clear that, as to the “point” of his journey, “he will GET there”...
... Laughs were caused when a person commented about Martin’s role in this movie compared to his acclaimed Presidential role in the “WEST WING” TV show, “Your character [in this] would never have VOTED for Jeb Bartlett!...”
... At one point, Martin talked about his FAMILY & how all the kids are actors: Emilio, Ramón, Carlos (who uses the stage name Charlie Sheen) & Renée...
... When asked by someone in the audience, Martin said, he’s worked with ALL of them on various projects, & he finds that “the SWEETEST part of the profession”-- tho that can be a bit difficult at times in that “we know where all the ‘BUTTONS’ are to PUSH!...”
... As to this new movie, Martin indicated various of the kids were involved with it, & “It’s doubly enjoyable doing it WITH the family...”
... Furthermore, Martin commented that he feels this role in “THE WAY” is “the BEST thing I’ve done in a LONG time-- thanks to this guy [ & he pointed to EMILIO ]!...”
... Responding to a man in the audience, Emilio said that yes, the movie is one of those being shown at the TORONTO Film Festival...
... He spoke some about the difficulty in getting FUNDING to make the movie. When studio people saw there were no “bad” guys, no FIGHTING or the like in the plans for the film, “Their eyes GLAZE over. They don’t ‘GET’ it...”
... Emilio & Martin urged the audience to please tell their FRIENDS about the film. And, if the film is able to do reasonably well with such a simple, “gentle” type of story, “Hollywood may WAKE UP—” to the idea that people are willing to accept films that aren’t just a “MINDLESS” type of entertainment...
... Emilio feels that, movies like “THE HELP” & “THE KING’S SPEECH” really “WORK” & the public has shown they will happily RECEIVE such film-making efforts...
... That’s one reason he & Martin have taken an “old-fashioned ‘WHISTLESTOP’ TOUR” to try to promote THEIR film, believing that it also is one that “WORKS” & resonates with the public (which brought hearty APPLAUSE from the audience)...
... Emilio hopes that MORE such films can be made if the public responds well to “THE WAY”, which is set to open nationally on October 7th...
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