Of course, I had to see “The Road” because of the intriguing Cormac McCarthy book, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Most seem to know what it’s about: a father and a son trying to survive after some unknown apocalyptical disaster has gutted civilization. The father and boy are on a road going south to the coast, where presumably they might find more food and have a better chance at survival. But along the way there are roving bands of bad guys the father and boy try to avoid, who take prisoners and eat people to get by. It’s a world reduced to savagery and a food-to-mouth existence, where the boy worries if they are still the “good” guys who won’t resort to cannabalism, and his father assures him that they are, that they’re “carrying the fire.”
The movie is a somber affair. The wife, played by Charlize Theron in flashbacks, decides life post-apocalypse isn’t worth living and does herself in before their journey (no great secret if you’ve read the book). Viggo Mortensen, as the father is looking old and scraggily in this, but is excellent as is the boy played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. The cinematography is especially affecting, with scenes of an ashen, dead landscape, where rotting trees split and fall in deafening crescendo, and broken-into cars and houses are left by the wayside. The area around Mount St. Helens serves as a haunting backdrop to the film’s shots of a post-apocalyptic world.
The movie follows the book to a tee. I was sure they would mess with it, but even the ending is like the book’s. Because of the book, I knew where the scary parts would be. The movie seems much more scary than depressing. God the cannibals! You’ll never want to go down into the cellar again. Why does Viggo do it?!&%! Run for Christ sakes!
The Washington Post and L.A. Times pretty much clobbered the movie (the N.Y. Times a bit less so). The Post’s Ann Hornaday called it a “thin, hopelessly mannered story” — “one long dirge … marking the death of hope and the leaching of all that is bright and good from the world.” The L.A. Times’ Kenneth Turan said it was good at horrifying and depressing us but had little else to offer. I thought it faithful to the book and was a pretty affecting tale, a warning of sorts about nuclear annihilation. It reminded me a little of the 1983 TV event, “The Day After.” It also had redemptive qualities in the bonding of the father and son, and in the overall fight between good and the forces of chaos and evil. The struggle to get to the sea and the ending there are subtle but compelling. It might not be an Oscar contender, but “The Road” is no slouch of a movie.
ps. Watch for Robert Duvall as the old nearly blind man they encounter on the road (barely can tell it’s him), and thankfully Guy Pearce comes in at the end. I can’t help but quote from “The Road” these days in asking, “Are you carrying the fire?”
