The Road

 

 

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"The Road" by "No Country for Old Men" author Cormac McCarthy is a quiet but volcanically devastating novel that looks unflinchingly into the darkest depths of human existence ...and still finds light. The long-anticipated film version here was well worth the wait and lived up to the enormous expectations set upon it by those who had read the Pulitzer prize winning book and were stunned by it.

Viggo Mortensen, these past few years, has really been in his prime, doing the best work of his career. Just when I thought his performance in "History of Violence" could not possibly be topped, there comes "The Road".

His portrayal of a nameless father shepherding himself and his young son, with the highly loaded, ironic symbol of their shopping cart, across an inexplicably destroyed America, in a post-apocalyptic nightmare more cruel and gruelling than anything previously imagined, shows that Mortensen is an actor of the highest possible calibre.

His father, who is ruthlessly protective of the innocence embodied in his son, though subtly played, is a powerhouse portrait of a man's determination to see that the light of the world does not go out. Even in situations of the most abysmal and hopeless darkness, despite enormous odds, the man carries on, even as his own mortality breathes its foul and frigid breath down his determined neck.

Like the McCarthy book, this film is deathly quiet - bone-chillingly, almost suffocatingly quiet and unrelenting in its heavy, gray unchangeability. It is a sequence of events along the same road, following a dogged path of near-death survival with only various kinds of tragedy and horror to offer any variation. But it is far from boring or tedious.

The film version of the novel beautifully maintains the oppressively gray monotony along with an electrically charged tension and nerve-snapping fear. The only respites are the flashbacks to the man's pre-apocalyptic life in a sunny, green world with his wife, played with striking and frightening realism by Charlize Theron. One of the most intense emotional highlights is the deeply moving, painfully vulnerable scene where Mortensen pleads with the suicidal Theron not to leave ... while the world burns down in monstrous, choking clouds of ash. Her reasonings and decisions make a tragic, devastating sense that one is helpless to contradict. They add even more tension and ambiguity to the stupor of reason that the mass destruction has brought. The world has been utterly destroyed, and along with it, for the most part, the linear human reason that constructed that world in the first place. The mind-numbing impact of the situation has blasted away every human artifice except the struggle to stay alive ... or not.

Robert Duvall's cameo too, is a masterpiece in itself, bringing out the compassion that the son embodies but that the father seems to have abandoned in his steel will for survival. The son's compassion later provides a tension and crisis that transforms him, and thereby Mortensen's character, in an unforseen flipping of moral superiority. The son becomes then, the father to the man. Kodi Smit-McPhee's performance as Mortensen's son deftly walks the shakey fine line between terrified innocence and emerging personality, a man of his own, coming into being.

This movie is definitely NOT for those who like to see Mortensen as the reluctant King of Gondor or as powerful and mysterious crime figures. This one, a difficult and frightening masterpice, is for those who realize that Viggo Mortensen is an incredibly talented actor.

John Hillcoat's direction and cinematography are inspired, completely impeccable and powerfully evocative of McCormac's now-classic novel. This is a movie version of a great book that actually does the written work an immense justice. That is a very rare thing in cinema, to be sure.

*** Viewers: do not miss the moving experience waiting for you after the film itself ends and the credits start to roll ***

A haunting, even tear-provoking, sound collage, probably recorded in a typical residential suburb, is played for a remarkably long time over the end credits ... and is NOT to be missed! Most probably walked out of the theatre without hearing it and many of us will stop the DVD once the credits begin to roll ... RESIST that. Keep the disc going and let the sonic meditation of the sounds of our taken-for-granted world: lawn mowers, sprinklers, dogs barking, children playing etc hit you with the full force of its intended impact. I would venture that a total experience of "The Road" is not complete until you've sat through the end credits to their final conclusion. It is a riveting and achingly poignant coda in the light of the film you just saw.

NOT for the faint of heart or those needing constant bangs, flashes or an ADD flood of 10-second edits to keep them interested. This is for those who like things REAL, exquisitely paced and psychologically and emotionally transformative.

"The Road" is a major work of Art.

The road is beautiful, horrifying and left me completely devastated. It is storytelling at it's finest, a very powerful film. All of the visuals are stunning. You can literally feel the world dying. The horror of seeing a father and son facing this increasing desolation and desperation is gut wrenching. Danger is everywhere around them: starvation, exposure and perhaps most terrifying are the people who hunt down and cannibalize survivors. Watching the father's continuous struggle with whether or not he will be able to use his final bullet when it comes time to save his son from a horrifying fate is unbearable. One thing that really elevated this movie for me was how the director captured the beauty of the actors' faces. Viggo Mortensen in particular, his eyes are luminous and his soul seems painted on his face. I think he could have carried the entire movie without a word he was so expressionate. Highly recommended, with a side of Kleenex.

As much as I tried liking this film (I am a huge Viggo Mortensen fan), I couldn't help but conclude that this is a relatively dull film. The backdrop of a world totally devastated of plant and animal life, the emergence of human cannibalism, and from what I could garner from the film, the progressive extinction of the female gender, is a nightmarish vision of a hell on earth. But what makes it a hell on earth is not so much the physical destruction of Mother Earth as is the destruction of the human spirit. Though the tender and loving relationship between father and son is emotive, I found the film to have an overbearing sense of nihilism which hindered me from caring for the characters or story in the film. In fact, I found myself wishing they would all just die and be put out of their misery, since they literally had nothing to live for except survival. It is difficult to even fathom an interested God is such a hell.

I also found the film to be grossly inconsistent. The idea that everything would perish except a handful of humans seems rather absurd. Anything that could kill all plant, animal, insect life, and 99% of the human population probably would kill 100% of everything. I realize the film is not really about Armageddon, but how love can giving the human spirit meaning even in the most hellish scenario, but the film puts it in the context of such hopeless despair for the future that it is difficult to really appreciate the deep love the Mortensen character has for his son. I found the ending also inconsistent and misleading, since it implies a hope that really is not there if one really thinks about it.

A film that is interesting enough, but not really that entertaining.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Had to have this work in my collection
Wow! A definate hit and 'must have' for any collection. Not for the faint of heart though: the subject matter touches on many pertinent existenstial questions: What does the... Read more

Published 15 months ago by JoWho?

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