THE WAY, MY WAY. Starring: Chris Haywood. Also Laura Lakshmi, Pia Thunderbolt and Jennifer Cluff. Directed by Bill Bennett. Rated PG (Mild themes and coarse language). 100 min.
English-born Australian film director Bill Bennett directed, wrote, and co-produced the movie. Nearing 60, Bennett decided to walk the 800km Camino trail for 31 days across the top of Spain to Santiago de Compostela.
Bennett’s walk, as he recounts in this film, takes viewers on an uplifting spiritual journey. The film stars English-born Australian actor Haywood. It documents Bennett’s actual journey and is based on a best-selling memoir of the same name, The Way, My Way: A Camino Memoir, published by Bennett in 2014, which details the walk he completed in 2013. Bennett has been a writer/director of more than 16 movies, and his film-making career spans some 40 years.
At the outset, Bennett describes himself as a stubborn, self-centred man, and his Camino walk was transformative. At the start of his trip, he didn’t consciously know why he was doing it, but his outlook on life changed when he was affected by his collegial interactions with the people, whom he met on his walk. He began the walk searching for meaning, and he ended it by finding himself. The film offers an authentic, insightful depiction of walking the Camino.
Most of those appearing in the film are pilgrims Bennett met on the walk and the unscripted dialogue reflects their stories. These interactions provide the basis for the film’s core insights. As the various pilgrims share with Bennett the sufferings and joys of their lives it changes him. The pilgrims’ stories offer moving testimony to what walking the Camino can achieve.
Bennett’s direction ensures there are lots of laughter along the way, without distorting the essential honesty of the movie. Bennett’s experience is personal, but refreshingly humorous, and the walk clearly challenged him by pushing him to accept positive change. This is an entertaining film, that is both reflective and insightful, and it offers an inspirational account of ‘walking the Camino’. It is also a gentle film with a very moving ending.
Maslow Entertainment
Released 16 May 2024