The Road

If Mad Max is how you envision the post-apocalypse going down, you will understandably be a little confused and frightened by the influx of cannibalism and the severe shortage of leather pants in John Hillcoat’s The Road, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. Instead we are greeted by the cold reality of a dead earth without trees, animals, and for the most part, civil humans. In this imagining the planet is almost uninhabitable: wet, smoky, barren and filled with cannibal rednecks. We begin with a flashback showing “The Man” (Viggo Mortensen) living the good life with his wife (Charlize Theron) and hugging his horse until the end of the world begins late one night outside their bedroom window. It is here the ambiguities that anchored the book’s narrative begin, and turn what could have been a great film into merely a good one.

We follow The Man and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they traverse the mucky remnants of¬†back roads on the northeastern side of the United States, surviving literally day-to-day on old food and dirty water. Cannibals are a constant threat and the winter is rough. Viggo Mortensen does a fantastic job carrying the weight of having to father a child without anyone else’s help. Most impressive, however, is Kodi Smit-McPhee’s role as the Boy. Born after the world began its slide into ruin, he knows no other existence. His bewilderment at the bubbles in a can of coke and at the site of a small beetle are truly inspiring. The cinematography captures dead-Earth in a way few other disaster movies have ever done. Land-nested ships and filthy hillside shacks give the impression that death took its time ridding the planets of its inhabitants. Our protagonist’s journey is a rough one to witness. Suicide is always the next option if things don’t go well, and finding those who died by their own hand is common. It’s hard to watch, but the love that holds the father and son together is also what holds us to them.

The problem with ambiguity mentioned earlier isn’t simply a setup of an unknown natural or unnatural disaster. We never learn why the world ended in the novel, either. We simply follow an unnamed man and his son as they survive day-to-day in their quest to reach the coast. However, the question lingers in the background of the novel, while dialogue in reference to this were omitted in the film. The novel addresses the question as to why the earth was destroyed but it then immediately dismisses it because the Man no longer sees any point in asking. It’s understandable, as a world where eating other humans is the most rational option causes you to leave the theoretical “how’s and why’s” at the door. Still, on the screen this notion of not needed to know “why?” is easier to accept. The movie clearly shows that their motivations aren’t a search for a cure, an arc, or remedy for the earth’s ills but simply survival. The images of dead forests and moldy homes filled with numerous skeletons are there to remind us what the stakes are and not why they are.

The real problem, rather, is what was added to the story. The Man’s wife has one scene in the novel, a mere three pages, whereas in the film she has at least that many flashbacks. The book seems to assume that the man has removed her from his mind the best he can in order to keep sane and survive. In the film he seems to dwell on her. Furthermore, it seems to go against the earlier notion of not asking “why?” and “how?” things got to where they are. If their very survival depends on pushing forward and forgetting the past, how has he lasted so long when the focus on his wife almost equals that of his son?

Despite these flaws, the film is otherwise extremely faithful. Charlize Theron does well considering the unevenness of her character and Robert Duvall’s cameo is of course well done. Overall, the film is not bad, but frustratingly not great. It has the best of intentions and comes so close to the essential realist take on the end of the world but fails to fully bring the viewer along with it.

Recent posts by Jesse

• Up in the Air - January 18th, 2010
• V - November 10th, 2009

Digg

Stumble Upon

Del.icio.us

Buzz