The Way, My Way: This film made me want to walk the Camino — even with dicky knees

As the title suggests, the central character in The Way, My Way has firm opinions on how he should walk the popular 800km pilgrimage path through Spain.

Chris Hayward as Bill Bennett in The Way, My Way.

As the title suggests, the central character in The Way, My Way has firm opinions on how he should walk the popular 800km Camino de Santiago pilgrimage path through Spain.

He shuns modern trekking poles – “they don’t have the romance” – in favour of a “gnarled and knotty” staff. He has a dicky knee yet breaks a promise to his wife to “take it easy” on the first days of the month-long walk. He wears a Sydney Swans cap but refuses to drink beer because that’s the libation of “yobbos”.

“I’m not a patient man,’’ he admits. He adds that if he had to be summed up in one word, most people would choose “boofhead”. His wife puts it best as she sees him off: “I’m hoping that after this walk I won’t have to apologise for you any more.”

He is the Australian filmmaker Bill Bennett and this documentary-drama hybrid is his screen adaptation of his 2013 memoir of the same name. He is played by veteran Australian actor Chris Hayward. Bennett’s wife of 41 years, the actor Jennifer Cluff, plays herself. Hayward and Cluff co-starred in Bennett’s 1985 drama A Street to Die. So we have an actor playing the writer-director in an autobiographical story. Two other actors, Laura Lakshmi and Pia Thunderbolt, are Rosa and Cristina, two beautiful young pilgrims Bennett meets on the trail. It’s an unusual mix that can sap the authenticity of the story. When Bennett finally tries trekking poles, for example, Rosa says an obviously scripted line about him joining the “dark side”.

Fortunately, however, most of the speaking parts are real pilgrims going their way on the visually spectacular Camino Way. The best scene is when two of them, Laszlo Vas and Balazs Orban, each from Hungary, reveal their reasons for going on the trek. It brings tears to their eyes, and may do so for viewers, too.

Bennett has his own confessional moment near the end, speaking to his wife by phone, and while it’s acted by Hayward, it feels real. At the outset, Bennett says he learned about the pilgrimage when he and his wife were on a driving holiday in Spain. The pilgrims reminded him of “lemmings plodding headlong to their deaths”.

Yet he decided he wanted to join them. He did not know why. “I want the walk to give me the answer.” I think it did. For starters, he drinks beer and seems to like it.

This is a quiet, gentle, uplifting film about freeing oneself from the everyday and discovering the comfort of strangers - though not in the way Ian McEwan imagines. It made me want to walk the Camino, despite my two dicky knees.

The Way, My Way (PG)

100 minutes
In cinemas

★★★