Lovely little film

  This was a beautiful small film about a father mourning the loss of his only son. His son had begun the Camino de Santiago as a pilgrimage to help 'find himself'. I had never heard of this pilgrimage (only Mecca, really and maybe Lourdes), but the  Camino is actually a well-known destination for those in need of  an introspective journey. The route begins in the Pyrenees mountains, at the small French town St Jean-de-Port. The route takes you through the Basque (Vasca) region of Spain, through some rugged landscapes and beautiful rolling fields of farmland. The journey is to trace the route which St James took while he was proselytizing in Spain and ends where his remains are interned at Santiago de Compostela.
The doctor's son was a man who had seemingly lost his way in life, who was without direction and without purpose. He was at the beginning of his trek when he took a fall in the Pyrenees mountain and lost his life. The father, a well-to-do widower doctor, takes the phone call on the golf course that his son had been found dead on the mountain. You can sense his grief as he leaves his bewildered golfing friends alone on the course as he races off in the golf cart.
The father chooses to fly to Spain to retrieve his son's body (the cremation scene was particularly haunting) and as he has the box something in him pushes him towards finishing this final task in memoriam to his only son. At each of the stations  of the journey, you can stamp your 'passport' and at the end of the journey you are left with a many-colored and embossed book. At each of this checkpoints, the doctor takes the battered tin box and pensively scatters a bit of his son's remains over the spot. To retrieve the passport at the end of your journey you must share with the attendants your reason for taking the pilgrimage and for what life lessons you may have learned from the trip.

Throughout his journey, the doctor has glimpses of his son in the scenery. The flashbacks of him arguing with his son about how the Camino was a total waste of one's time, and how "envious" he was of his son's free time to spend two months hiking across the northern part of Spain, were particularly painful.
That both roles were played by real-life father and son, Emilio Estevez and his father Martin Sheen was especially powerful. It was nice to see Emilio Estevez in a serious role and to see the obvious respect and admiration they shared with each other both on-screen and in real life.
For those who will be traveling in Northern Spain, this is a must see. The scenery is spectacular, the views of the Basque region, of Navarre and the Gothic cathedrals dotting the landscape, or the sheep gamboling across verdant fields are truly inspirational. We took many little mental notes of names of buildings and cities that we would like to possible visit when we are there in the fall.
A lovely little film that celebrates life, the love between a father and his wayward son, and celebrating the memory of those who traveled the Way before us.
Cormac McCarthy writes at the end of his novel "No Country For Old Men" of a dream that the main character has about his own father, long passed.  It is to me what those who die before us are leaving behind for us. I think it ties into very well with this movie. McCarthy writes: ...it was like we was both back in the older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept goin. He never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I see he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.