[Gocamino] Camino books and Dvds

[Rosina]

Hello you all,
A close second to the plethora of journal-type Camino books is the surge in video tapes turned into Dvds that have become so ubiquitous over the past few years. Most of them pretty much show the same tracts and monuments of the French Camino and its landmarks, including those colorful persons that we know so well, e.g. Majarin, and express virtually the same pilgrim sentiments.  (YouTube, of course, also has lots and lots of such journal-type videos, in several languages..... my favorite ones are those in German although, alas! I do not understand the language)
Well, recently a Camino DVD became publicly available that while being much the same is pretty different. I enjoyed watching it very much.
It covers the pilgrimage of a very successful Masseratti-driving, no less,  US surgeon in his seventies who decides to make the pilgrimage.   A man of proven ability and success in his career, and exuding the air of authority and self-confidence ancillary to remarkable professional achievements, he apparently becomes baffled by his failure to find a scientific answer, or potential solution, to an unfathomable illness afflicting a grandson.
Without much practical preparation, and with very few words, he takes off for the Camino. Presumably at the urging of their mother two of his sons, in their thirties, accompany him; one of them has film-making experience and films the undertaking with a hand-held camera.
Some of the shots are visually beautiful and some appear amateurish, but what appears different to me is the general tone and essence of the surgeon's efforts as depicted in the film.  A quintessential "lets-get-it-done" fellow of few words, a-la Gary Cooper, and endearingly unaware of the exigencies of the requirements of the Camino on a body in its seventh decade, he goes on, without paying too much heed to the effort which is, however, all too evident in the film.
The pebbles, the hills, the narrow pathways, the another ascent after the last one, and the body almost bending like a tree in a storm but forging forth, are admirable. (And reminiscent of our own efforts there)
There is no rhapsodizing in the film. no great insights or epiphanies, not even a botafumeiro at the end of the journey: it is just about a purposeful, efficient, accomplished man of science incredibly following a small unscientific light of hope burning in his heart.
Those of us who love the Camino and who, willingly or not, have been touched by it in ways that never cease to cause us wonder, will not be surprised by the final denouement when the surgeon returns home....... In fact, we may be inclined to say:  "But, of course!".

The name of the DVD is "The Surgeon and the Saint: on the road to Santiago de Compostela"
It can be obtained by writing to  ginodelg at mac.com.

Hugs!

Rosina