For the best part of The Way, My Way, Bill Bennett, played by veteran Australian actor Chris Haywood, insists that he has no idea why he has set off to walk the 800kms Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.
With his damaged knee and ‘grumpy old man’ demeanour, he hears about the walk from travellers while on a trip to Europe, declares it the craziest thing he’s ever heard, then promptly wants to tackle it himself.
Bill Bennett has been a movie director for 40 years, his work including AFI award winners In a Savage Land and Kiss or Kill. He documented his Camino pilgrimage, first in blogs for family back home, then in a book that became a best seller. His publishers recently released a 10 year anniversary edition. The book has huge popularity, especially among the Camino walkers community, who describe it as an authentic depiction of the world famous pilgrimage.
Although there is something of an epiphany in the movie version, Bennett told Rob’s Camino blog host that that wasn’t the case in real life. Even after reaching his goal, he still wasn’t sure why he had undertaken the challenging walk, and wrote the book in the hope that it would help him figure it out.
In any case, at the start of the movie, Bill presents as an archetype, obstinate and unconscious, the unaware fool, a Don Quixote on a reckless, stubborn quest. There are a couple of popular movies in the same vein, A Walk in the Woods adapted from Bill Bryson’s book of the same name, and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. In every case, there is the theme of a middle aged man setting off on a foolish venture with a long suffering wife at home, who provides the opposition and moral judgement.
In this movie, Jennifer Cluff, who also produced The Way, My Way is equal parts comic ‘scary’ (in Bill’s eyes) and unconditionally loving partner. Cluff is also notable as one of only four professional actors in the movie. All the other cast are ‘actuals’, i.e. Bennett’s fellow travellers from when he did the walk 10 years earlier. Here, they reprise their encounters with Bill and share their mainly unscripted stories in some of the movie’s best scenes. These moments capture the spontaneous intimacy that can occur between fellow walkers after a long day’s hike.
The landscape is beautiful of course, filmed in a straightforward style, as the camera follows Bill’s limping walk through medieval villages in France and Spain, interspersed with plentiful drone shots of pathways cutting through countryside to illustrate the theme of a long road ahead. There is also a countdown device for the audience, a simple clocking of the kilometres, telling us which town we have arrived at and how far to go to complete the goal.
In his character arc, Bill starts out as domineering and closed minded. For example, he only drinks fine red wine, he never drinks beer, ‘that’s for yobbos’. Of course, he ends up ‘drinking with the yobbos’ in one of the most natural moments in the film, when he comes across a group of revellers getting drunk and playing music outside in the sunset countryside.
It is in moments like these where Haywood shines, free to improvise, a physical embodiment of the warm, playful man behind the stubborn curmudgeon.
Overall, this is a story simply told. The suffering that leads some people on the pilgrimages is touched on lightly. The director gives space for each pilgrim to tell their story in the manner of the Canterbury Tales. A tragic Mary Magdalene type, played by professional actor Pia Thunderbolt, touches on darker themes, though the exchange between her and Bill seems mis-timed and superficial.
His journalistic questioning of fellow travellers’ purpose for their walking is a nice device that elicits the travellers’ tales and offsets his comic bossiness, taking over as ‘set director’ at every opportunity. Haywood makes the positive side of Bill’s confidence and curiosity believable and engaging. And apparently, crew members noted that he got Bennett’s real life shuffling limp down to a tee.
We don’t believe the walk really changes him though, do we? In the end, it’s still ‘My Way’. A female traveller, played by professional actor Laura Lakshmi, is witness and commentator to Bill’s wearisome male ego, constantly trying to prove itself with meaningless goals. Did we mention Don Quixote?
But, like the book before it, The Way, My Way is a must for modern day pilgrimage seekers.
The Way, My Way is in cinemas 16 May 2024
