Camino, a feature-length selfie (2019)

Directed by: Martin de Vries | 85 minutes | documentary

Hiking is in. Countless people have (re)discovered the joy of simply putting one foot in front of the other. It has many advantages: it is (almost) free, you can do it almost anywhere and anytime and in addition to the obvious positive effect on your condition and therefore your health, it also provides psychological benefits. Walking clears your head, you can think in peace or come to new insights. Of course you can go for a walk during your lunch break or in the evening after dinner, but there are more and more people who take walking more seriously and make it a holiday or even take a sabbatical to go hiking.

Martin de Vries (1956) is a Dutch program maker, producer and editor. He worked as an editor on Van Kooten en de Bie and launched TV channel NostalgieNet in 2006 (since 2015 ONS). He decided to make the famous walking tour to Santiago de Compostela, from the French town of Le Puy-en-Velay. The journey is about 1600 kilometers, a distance that most pilgrims cover in about 60 to 70 days. De Vries has not prepared himself physically, but that does not appear to be necessary. He did put a GoPro in his luggage to film himself and the environment. In this he will not be unique. At the end of the tour, however, the sometimes quite intimate shots turned out to be more distant from him than he thought and with the help of friends from the trade, these many clips eventually resulted in this documentary: ‘Camino, a feature-length selfie’.

Just like the walk itself, watching ‘Camino’ initially also requires some perseverance. The first half of this ego-documentary consists of shots of the filmmaker himself, who makes few surprising comments about the beautiful surroundings, his doubts and motivation to continue and the physical ailments that plague him. Whether you can keep this up as a viewer just depends on the extent to which you want to invest in a film by, about and with a man who admits that one of the highlights of the day is immediately in the morning when he is completely naked can poop in the wild (don’t worry, this won’t show up).

But whether the pilgrimage serves as a metaphor for watching this film or not; the longer you’ve been with De Vries and you’re almost approaching the Spanish border, at some point it’s too late to stop. That the filmmaker achieves the goal is never in dispute, but it is the inner change that you start to care about. Of course ‘Camino’ is a narcissistic film, but at the same time – precisely because of the recognizable outpourings about fears and doubts and the vulnerability with which De Vries presents himself – it transcends that form.

Visually, ‘Camino, a feature-length selfie’ is actually below par. You see fewer images of the environment than you would like, much more often the heaving head of the filmmaker himself is in the picture, or his feet, or his shadow moving forward. That is understandable, given the creation of this documentary. It ultimately results in a mixed film, which has too little in it to recommend it and not bad enough to discourage it. Perhaps for that very reason, it is ideal for people who sometimes see themselves making this pilgrimage: go-getters, who are satisfied with small ups and downs, and who persist even in the knowledge that the climax at the end is not necessarily satisfying.