The Road
Movie Review
The Road
by Eric D. Snider
Grade: B
Released: November 25, 2009
Directed by:
Cast:
"The Road" is 2009's entry in the Movies You Admire and Respect but Don't Ever Want to Watch Again sweepstakes. You know going in that it's going to be bleak and somber; the question is whether it's also going to be profound and touching enough to compensate for that, to make you leave the theater thinking, "I've just seen a powerfully emotional work of art!" rather than "I've just seen something very, very depressing!"
For me, it was more of the latter. The artistic and emotional highs, while praiseworthy, aren't high enough to counteract the story's miserable lows. But having read the Cormac McCarthy book it's based on, it's impossible for me not to compare the movie to it. The book is one of the most beautiful, emotionally devastating things I've ever read. The movie, even at its best, could only be a repeat of that. But a movie can't replicate McCarthy's spare, poetic writing, or at least this one doesn't, not quite.
The story is simple. In a post-apocalyptic America -- nuclear war, probably; the details aren't important -- a man and his little boy trudge through the rubble. We don't learn their names. The man is played by Viggo Mortensen; the boy, who's about 10, is Kodi Smit-McPhee. The boy has only ever known this world. In flashbacks, we see his mother (Charlize Theron), who evidently gave birth in the early days of the devastation.
Almost all animal and human life has been destroyed. The man and the boy are heading for the coast, ultimately, finding whatever food they can along the way and avoiding the few humans they see signs of. People have proven untrustworthy in this every-man-for-himself world; cannibalism is a legitimate concern. The man has a gun with two bullets in it. He and the boy have discussed what to do if they are ever in imminent danger of being captured. Could you kill your own child to save him from a fate worse than death? That's one of the questions you'll be discussing with your friends after the movie, when you've gone to a pub to drink until you feel better.
The man and the boy talk about the "good guys," which includes them, and the "bad guys," which includes almost everyone else they've encountered. The good guys don't resort to cannibalism, no matter what. The good guys would work together with other good guys to create a society and pool their resources. There must be some good guys out there somewhere, the man hopes. Can he continue to be one of them until he finds them, or will the cruelty of the situation lead him inevitably to badness?
The director, John Hillcoat, who made a splash with the gritty Australian Western "The Proposition" a few years ago, has done a magnificent job creating an appropriately desolate wasteland for the characters to stumble through, bringing the awful world in which the film takes place vividly to life. The skies are relentlessly gray and overcast, and everything is covered in soot and ashes. The characters are suitably filthy and haggard. The musical score, by Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds bandmate Warren Ellis, is simple and evocative.
Central to the novel's power is the overwhelming love the father and son have for each other. "All I know is the child is my warrant," the man says in both the book and the movie. "If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke." By putting the father-son relationship in this horrific setting, McCarthy strips away all the extraneous stuff: These two literally have nothing except each other. A father would do anything to protect his son from the terrors of the world; in the book we see that this holds true even when terrors comprise 99% of what the world has to offer. It's the discovery of this uplifting truth -- that a parent's love is unconditional and limitless -- that makes the arduous journey worthwhile.
In the movie, this message is not conveyed with much strength. Whether it's due to some missing element of Mortensen's performance or Joe Penhall's screenplay adaptation or Hillcoat's direction -- or some combination of those -- I can't tell. What I know is that while the film is often thrilling and generally compelling, it doesn't have the poignance that it should. Falling under the heading of "good, but not great," I suspect this "Road" will be less traveled.
Grade: B
Rated R, a little profanity, some nonsexual nudity, several gruesome images and disturbing themes
1 hr., 59 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 12 comments
November 26, 2009 at 11:54 am
Hmm, I was suspecting this movie would be pretty much as you have described it. I have read the book and it depressed the Hell out of me, and I have been debating about whether or not to see the movie, knowing what I'm going in to. This may put me off from going to see it in theaters, but I won't know for sure until I confirm how the disturbing campfire scene from the book is portrayed, if at all.
November 27, 2009 at 8:50 am
I, too, envisioned that the apocalypse was due to nuclear war as I was reading the book. Later, though, I have read in several places that McCarthy says he imagined "an impact event" as the cause of the devastation. For some reason, this made the book less terrifying to me.
November 27, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Not "Desperate Housewives" fare.
This s deep, thoughtful fictional story (book or movie)-- an emotional philosophical journey that allegorically strips all life down to a one and one relationship between a parent and a child (man and boy; after all Cormac is a man and a father -- he was writing from his viewpoint).
If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then don't see the movie, and don't read the book. You'll only come away with your own bitter taste.
December 3, 2009 at 9:22 pm
I had also read the book and had been wondering how this movie would turn out. The book also falls into that category of a book I liked---i guess, but never want to read again. It haunted me and still does. I find myself pondering the things I read more regularly than I would expect. I was hoping that the movie would do the same thing for people who haven't read the book.
I'll probably watch the movie eventually. I'm actually just glad it doesn't totally suck.
December 8, 2009 at 12:10 pm
i read that the infamous "campfire scene" is not portrayed in the movie, and that there was one other scene that was also too intense, so was left out.
I don't know what this "other scene" is. i wonder if it's the one with the troop of cannibals followed by their slaves and catamites bringing up the rear. i hope that one is in there, it would be a powerful visual.
December 13, 2009 at 12:11 am
On a whim I picked up the book to read on a 2 hour flight and ended up finishing it just before landing. I had planned to sleep on that flight but I could not put it down for even a second.
As soon as I finished the last page I just stared numbly at the seat back in front of me till we landed. It was too late to ask for a vodka...
One thing that struck me later was that I was highly frustrated with the fact that it's never said how the world ended. Which was silly to me. After thinking about this some more I realized that this was the first apocalyptic / post-apocalyptic novel I had encountered that did that. And then I loved it. It gets past that point, treats it almost as irrelevant to the world that exists now for the father and son. I feel that this contributes to the unsettling nature of this novel, and this is a novel, a piece of literature to me. One that I randomly picked up and will never forget. Even tho there are bits I'd like to...
As to the "other scene" i suspect it might be the one where they find the people in the house. That and the campfire scene are the two most disturbing scenes for me. I'll be going to see this. And yes, drink a hell of a lot afterwards.
January 21, 2010 at 8:39 pm
I liked the story and the movie.
I didn't like the coke commercial. It was too painful.
The weakest piece of the movie = the child actor. Extremely annoying. Missed the mark. His lines didn't help. "But are we still the good guys?" Please. Enough WHINING already.
It's extremely unrealistic that the father would let the boy keep whining so; or that the boy, raised in such an environment, would concern himself with such lofty philosophical notions.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. I hate the notion that Love is never getting angry. There was one point in the movie where the father got angry, finally...but NOT ENOUGH.
Also, the man's wife (shown in flashbacks) was ridiculous. HuH? It was hard to identify with him when he just let her wander off into the freezing night, consumed with depression.
I'm no stranger to depression, but it was impossible to relate...she supposedly cared SO much about her child that she had to abandon him? Bleh. Whatever. And her 'gift' was the dispassionate manner in which she left them? Dumb.
Woulda been much better if she'd grabbed that gun and blown her brains out in a moment of rash, impulsive depression (and much more sad).
As she left, she just seemed like a cold bitch. Not at all a gift-giver. And he seemed impossibly weak, not to physically stop her.
That's what you WOULD do. If you had a woman and a child and the woman decided to take off into the freezing night. You would grab her and beg her (or guilt her) not to.
Stupid.
But I loved the rest.
February 19, 2010 at 4:00 pm
If anything about the movie (such as mentioned above by Adam X)bothers you then read the book. Movie good, Book better.
March 1, 2010 at 5:51 pm
I agree Matt.
I have not yet seen the movie but the "dumb" aspects that Adam mentions in the movie did not at all seem unrealistic in the book itself.
The Boy in the book did not whine. Not once. He pleads at a point, but never whined.
I have to say also that of course I wondered what had happened to the world but spent very little time pondering the subject. It was enough to know that something did happen. That wasn't what the story was about.
I was just about ready to type that I "loved" the book but that's not really right. It was horrible. Extremely well written-powerful-thought provoking-well done, but hideous and gut wrenching.
OK, off to stock my cellar!
July 12, 2010 at 10:30 am
""But are we still the good guys?" Please. Enough WHINING already."
Yeah, man. He should have punched that damn kid in the head for acting like a 10 year old. I hate kids like that.
December 8, 2011 at 4:05 pm
I wasn't quite so fond of the book myself, and the movie actually scared me. It is one of those movies you look at once because it scars itself into your memory. The only reason I read and watched the movie was because it was apart of my AP English grade
August 31, 2012 at 10:44 am
I thought there was nothing redeeming about this movie. It was completely depressing throughout the whole film. I have no problem with depressing movies but this one had absolutely no redeeming value. To constantly search for food, find a hidden bunker with a whole lot of food, stay a few days and leave because they hear something outside? Not real at all. So they leave (with some food) and go back into "hell" again? The man could have done a better job concealing the bunker, as he was smart and resourceful. That scene bothered me a lot because it made no sense at all. Also, the "uplifting" moment was the discovery of a bug at the end of the movie (to represent life coming back?)Bottom line - to make a movie that is nothing but depressing is a waste of film stock. Even though "Book of Eli" was a little more "un-realistic" it was much more enjoyable to watch. Sorry but I give "the road" a big thumbs down.