Ten years ago, Australian filmmaker Bill Bennett published a best-selling book based on his experiences walking the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage stretching across Europe, which leads to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
A decade later, Bennett has turned his experiences walking the Camino into a charming new feature film.
Starring long-time collaborator Chris Haywood, The Way, My Way follows an elderly man, Bill, who decides to take on the challenging 800km pilgrimage. Initially, Bennett had major doubts about making The Way, My Way into a feature, believing it was not worthy of a screen adaption.
“The reason I changed my mind was because (long-time film distributor) Richard Becker read the book and it deeply affected him. And he came to me and said, ‘look, I think there’s a movie in this’. And I said, respectfully, ‘Richard, there’s not, if I thought there’d been a movie in it, I would’ve written a screenplay by now’. I said that I can’t do it, and I’m not gonna do it. He said, ‘I’ll get three writers to write three treatments’. He sent me these three treatments, the people hadn’t walked the Camino, they had no idea,” Bennett recalls.
“I thought the only way it can be done is if I do it,” he adds.
It became a long-term passion project for Bennett, the film was in development for six years. At one stage, a big-budget version was planned, yet scrapped, as it did not suit the material.
“I sort of found myself caught up with big co-producing partners and a major sales agent in America, going out to big name cast and all that. All the time I was thinking, ‘this doesn’t feel right’. When the whole thing just sort of fizzled out, I thought, ‘well, this led to me doing the film way that I should be doing it’.”
Early on, Bennett even considered playing himself, yet settled on his longtime collaborator, Chris Haywood. For Bennett, no one else could represent him.
“I felt that an actor of Chris’s capability could do a far better job. And I thought that if I played myself, it would brand the film a documentary. But if Chris played it, it would put it squarely in the dramatic feature category. I’m so pleased that I made that decision to go ask Chris, because I think he’s done a superlative job,” Bennett says.
In his 40+ year career, Bill Bennett has worked on everything from self-devised Aussie no-budgeters to Hollywood fare starring Sandra Bullock. One of biggest challenges in the making The Way, My Way was its modest means and skeleton crew.
“I walked on sets where I don’t know the name of everyone. On the film that we did in New Orleans, Tempted with Burt Reynolds, I remember walking from the lead truck down the lane in New Orleans to the end truck. It took me an hour and a half,” he laughs about that particular pilgrimage.
“I thought, ‘well, the only way that this film can get made is if I go back to my roots’. Working with very small crews and do it really authentically, basically just have a tiny footprint on the Camino. I felt the only way to make the film, truthfully, was to work within the ebb and flow of the Camino.
“It was very challenging for sound, very challenging for camera. But if I can just say, I have the experience now where I know how to wring the utmost out of a situation. The sound on this film has been done by Big Bang. They were Oscar nominated last year for doing Elvis. The sound’s impeccable. The music is impeccable. I don’t feel as though we compromised at all doing it the way we did. In fact, it’s been a huge asset to do it the way we’ve done it, because I couldn’t have captured the essence of the Camino in the manner that I have with a bigger crew.”
For Bennett, who has walked the Camino five times, authenticity was a major priority. He cast the pilgrims that he walked with on his first trip in the film.
“I brought the pilgrims that I walked with originally. They came back to play themselves 10 years later.”
Camino authority, Johnnie Walker [below with Chris Haywood as Bill Bennett] who consulted on the film, believes it to be the most authentic Camino feature he has seen.
“It’s a true story unlike legions of other interpretations of the community. One hallmark of authenticity is that there are only three professional actors. The rest are pilgrims. Bill has understood, and I think depicts perfectly, the community of Santiago is but a vehicle for the change that takes part in the hearts of pilgrims. They change, we change as individuals, and we change also because of that interaction that you see in the film. At the end of a very hard day, the three pilgrims sit down. There happened to be three bottles of wine empty by the time they have their conversation, but they start to share things, really deeply personal things. Rosa shares that she’s on a spiritual search. Laszlo, in the most moving moment, says that he was always the second man. He wanted to have a family, but his girlfriends always chose someone else because of the way he looks. And Balasz just talking about his wife and the prospective loss of his wife and breaking down…
“When pilgrims come together and talk and celebrate, especially at the end of a hard day, your feet are throbbing, and you’re dying for a beer, and you start to talk. And these scenes are very typical of my experience over many, many Caminos,” Walker adds.
As The Way, My Way heads into release, Bennett and Walker have already had a massive response from audiences at sold out screenings across Australia.
Both hope that The Way, My Way will make an impact on those familiar with the trail, and on wider audiences.
“I’m certain this particular film will inspire people,” ends Bennett, for now. “I’ve been trying to inspire people for the last 20 years with my writings and my books and so forth. And this film does it in spades.”
The Way, My Way is in cinemas 16 May 2024
