Genres: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Director: John Hillcoat
MPAA Rating: R
Runtime: 108 min
Reviewer Ranking 8.5/10
Movie Review by: Hannah Morrissey
In a moment, the world changed forever. This is the hook used for John Hillcoat’s (The Proposition) film adaptation of The Road, based on the critically acclaimed novel by renowned author, Cormac McCarthy. If you’ve read the book, you’ll be expecting a grim tale set in a post-apocalyptic America where humanity is scarce and hope is an ever-fading mirage, of which the film is an honorable and poignant rendition of a challenging novel.
The plot centers on a father and his son who are moving through the devastated terrain of America. The world is a desolate tundra with few humans left alive, most of whom have relinquished into cannibalism, having chosen to devour their own kin rather than to meet a cold demise. Viggo Mortensen (Appaloosa) stars as the man who is heading south towards the coast with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee; Romulus, My Father), a grocery cart with all of their possessions, and a pistol containing two shots. Their journey is a struggle to hold on to “the fire,” to preserve their humanity as they travel south in hopes of escaping an endless winter. It is their love that sustains them, for as McCarthy writes, “then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.”
The film remains very true to the novel, which is to be commended. However, the film has something that the novel does not: flashbacks, reminiscences of the world past, before the unknown event that transformed everything into a void of death and darkness. When I read the book, the empathy I had for the characters and the fact that the world was so well developed was enough so that I did not need a glimpse of the previous world. In the film, these instances of light and happiness seem to set the tone off balance. It was enough for me just to watch the man go into his old house and sit at the piano, because then the viewer can infer that music was once something he greatly treasured. The entire story is captivating images of ghosts or empty shells of things that no longer exist or hold the same meaning as they once did, which forces the viewer to ask themselves, what did such things ever mean in the first place? In this respect, the flashbacks were unnecessary, although Charlize Theron (The Burning Plain) delivered an excellent, although brief performance as the boy’s mother.
The most notable performance, however, was done by Viggo Mortensen. Whatever role he plays, he becomes that character down to their truest essence. When I watched The Road, I was not thinking of him as the sword-wielding Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings or the slippery “other man” from A Perfect Murder, but I was watching a compelling and convincing performance of a father struggling to hold on to everything that he has left: his son. He even ate fried maggots in the movie—if that’s not diehard, I don’t know what is.
If, by chance, you are a Guy Pearce (In Her Skin) fan and go to see every movie that he is starring in, The Road may be a disappointment for you in that respect. Although his name is listed on the credits, he only shows up for about two or three minutes at the end.
I also think that the boy is less optimistic in the film than he is in the original novel. His innocence is profound and I understand that he is naïve to some of the harsh realities of the world, but there are times when he seems to react with anger too quickly. Because of these instances, I feel that the boy’s character is inconsistent—sometimes he seems really young, but other times he acts out on his father, the only source of solace he has left.
The score, crafted by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is wonderfully evocative, featuring melodies by the piano and violin, and then with episodes of frenetic percussion to add suspense to the terrifying moments in the film. “The music is about the loss of things, the absence of things, the lack of things,” explains composer Nick Cave, and this message is conveyed through his light and simple, yet haunting and eerie composition. It is a well-balanced score that is a sorrowful observation of the devastation of the earth, as well as a celebration of man’s imperishable determination to survive.
John Hillcoat’s The Road is a horrifying and gravely beautiful glimpse at the end of the world. This is a film that I highly recommend to anyone. It will captivate you and break you, forcing you to look inside of yourself and honestly think about what you would do in such a situation, and then leave you with a faint ember of hope.
