A GRIEVING patriarch walks in the footsteps of his late son in The Way, which sees Emilio Estevez direct father Martin Sheen.
The Way is a deeply personal film for the Estevez family, who wanted to pay tribute to their Spanish heritage.
Tom (Martin Sheen) is an American optometrist, whose perfect round of golf is ruined by news that his son Daniel (Emilio Estevez) has been killed in the Pyrenees in a storm. He flies to France to collect his son’s ashes and discovers that Daniel perished on the first leg of the El Camino de Santiago: an 800-kilometre spiritual pilgrimage. Tom grabs his son’s backpack and guidebook and decides to complete the pilgrimage in Daniel’s honour.
The Way is a love letter to the idyllic northern Spanish countryside and the people who open their homes to the pilgrims.
Sheen internalises his character’s anguish and we see sadness welling up in Tom’s eyes, underscored with occasional moments of humour.
