Joost's real reason for the journey

I think there were marital issues as well. At the end when they reach Santiago de Compostela and are telling the people giving them their certificates why they made the trip, he mentioned that his wife wouldn't sleep with him because he was fat.

I think the hotel scene when he was trying not to eat said it all for him. I got the feeling he simply wasn't happy with himself.

Sometimes the most deeply depressed people are the ones who appear the most jolly. I think Joost was the one on his third marriage, not the brother he mentioned when he met Tom. And I think this marriage was falling apart. Perhaps he felt his wife didn't find him attractive anymore. Maybe she'd had an affair. But whatever happened, Joost blames himself and his weight. So, he decides to take this pilgrimage thinking that if he could just lose weight, his wife would love him again - and maybe, he'd love himself again, too.

He feels unloveable and unattractive so he overcompensates, trying too hard to make friends. He even tries his hand at being a cheeky flirt with the woman who stamps his passport. He tells people he just met about Tom's obviously personal story. He blurts out to the woman issuing the compostelas that his wife won't sleep with him because he's too fat. He just wants someone to tell him, to show him, that he's still worthy of love.

And the scene, alone in his hotel room with the room service tray - with the image of the reflection of his overweight body fresh in his mind, he can't enjoy the good meal set in front of him. He hates himself for taking even one bite. He wants so desperately to respect himself and to love himself. What he doesn't see is that he possesses something so rare and beautiful that makes him shine from the inside out: innate kindness. As Jack says, it comes naturally to Joost.


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Are you ever NOT going to fall for that??

Weight, marital issues, self esteem, depression …. are all excellent answers. Yet they do not answer why Joost went to his knees at the finnish line. What was he looking for and did he get it? I would as well point out that profound goals such as Tom’s reconnecting to his dead son or Jack’s quest for inspiration were accomplished whilst Joost’s fatness or Sarah’s promise to quit smoking was not accomplished. I believe this is a key message from the film.