The Journey Is the Destination review – soft-focus biopic fails to capture subject

Few actors in recent years have experienced as quick a rise as Ben Schnetzer – and for good reason. The guy is crazy talented. First came a small part in The Book Thief (2013), followed by his breakout as the outspoken gay rights activist Mark Ashton in Pride (2014), a role that let loose his charismatic and assertive presence.

Schnetzer was more understated in the fraternity thriller Goat, which premiered at this year’s Sundance, and the misbegotten summer bomb Warcraft: The Beginning – but he’s back in cocksure mode as real-life photojournalist Dan Eldon in The Journey Is the Destination.

His spirited performance elevates what’s otherwise a largely scattershot biopic, which, by cramming in too much of Eldon’s life, never scrapes the core that drove him to pursue his passions despite their potentially fatal dangers.

The screenplay by Jan Sardi (Shine, The Notebook) starts well into Eldon’s exploits, documenting his encounters in South Africa and later Somalia, where he met his end at the age of just 22, stoned to death by an angry mob in Mogadishu. “I want to see and do so many things,” he writes in his journal. “The only problem is: where do I start?”

From there, the film backtracks six months to when Eldon graduated from the International School of Kenya (as a seven-year-old he had moved to Nairobi with his family), with dreams of capturing the world with his lens. This is relayed through a visit he makes to a news agency, where he’s told by a potential employer: “You need to get out there in the real world, where there’s warm beer and smelly pussies.”

Eldon embraces the advice and sets out to explore more of Africa, much to the dismay of his mother (a strained Maria Bello), who wants him to go to a nice British university, like other posh teenagers. He’s joined by a ragtag team of travellers of various ethnicities, who nevertheless behave like a group of privileged white kids (they get a kick out of the fact that impoverished people are forced to eat rats to stay alive). He even finds time to spark up a romance with a rich local whose dad helps fund their journey.

When their adventures take a dangerous turn following a daredevil supply run to Mozambican refugees, Eldon’s friends abandon ship, forcing him to fend for himself as a risk-prone photographer. Luckily he proves a quick learner, managing to finagle his way into covering events such as the end of apartheid in South Africa and escalating violence and famine in Somalia, making professional and personal connections along the way. Tthe reliable Kelly MacDonald plays an intrepid fellow photographer.

Director Bronwen Hughes (Forces of Nature) keeps her camera restlessly moving, straining to keep up with Eldon’s travails – but she does little to ground her picture. Eldon offers up platitudes such as, “If there’s something I can do to open people’s eyes, to force the subject to the top of the heap, that’s all I can do,” when explaining his unwavering drive. Yet Hughes never taps into what made Eldon tick creatively, instead rushing from one event to the next.

Most glaringly of all, she seems completely uninterested in his art. Eldon is always seen with a camera strapped around his neck, snapping away, but not once does Hughes slow everything down to zero in on his eye as a burgeoning photographer. Her scattershot approach renders Eldon an archetypal humanitarian rather than a full blooded artist, despite Schnetzer’s committed efforts.