IN “The Way” (2010), Martin Sheen played a man who, after a spur-of-the-moment decision, walks 800kms from Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and its cathedral where the disciple St James is reportedly buried.

In 2013, Lydia Smith made this documentary about six people making the same pilgrimage. There’s much about it that merits praise. Its people are real. Its events are spontaneous. Although traversing the same countryside as “The Way”, it sometimes follows different pathways.

Comparing the two films is not only unnecessary, it is also fruitless. Ms Smith has filmed people whose reasons ring true each in their own way. You can’t but find delight from little Cyran who sometimes walks, sometimes rides in the perambulator pushed by his mother or her brother. Another woman makes the journey in constant pain. A Canadian widower and his friend attack it with vigour. A young woman is making the pilgrimage to rid herself of the legacy of a dissolute life.

The Camino is a tourist experience totally supported by the people who live along its paths. The film doesn’t explore the pilgrimage’s monetary arrangements. Hospitality and support are what good people provide as a matter of course to help the walkers on their way.

“Walking The Camino” can give its audiences whatever they choose to take from it. Its plot is simply progress to an end, at an extraordinarily visually cluttered cathedral that has stood for 12 centuries in Compostela’s main plaza. Does it move the viewer to make the pilgrimage? Faith is not a necessary prerequisite.

At Palace Electric