The Road

There's no reason for me to summarize the plot for "The Road" because I've already covered it on this blog.

Honestly, I need to stand up to all the critics who characterized the movie as a flop. This film was an honest adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece. Was it as elegant or artistic or original as the novel? Of course not! But John Hillcoat's film was faithful to the heart and soul of the book. Of course, the result of working so closely with the source work is that the film is bleak and depressing, leaving the viewer to ponder the ultimate fate of humanity for an hour or two after finishing it.

Of course, to stay true to the meaning of the text, the film did have to stray from a literal page-by-page duplication of the book - which led to some unfortunate cuts. For example, although the whole scene was less than a minute, the encounter with the dying man who had been hit by lightning was cut (although it can be found in the "Deleted Scenes" on the DVD). This cut was made - I presume - because The Man and The Boy (portrayed wonderfully by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) are supposed to live in a world nearly devoid of people. Yet, the most comprehensible sequences in the film are when they encounter others like them. So, to balance the need for human interaction to move the film's narrative forward with the need to convey the fact that only a few humans are still alive, many cuts were made.

The setting of the film is pretty well exactly how I imagined the gray post-disaster landscape that McCarthy outlined, although I did not quite imagine so many abandoned cars for some reason (but I put that fault on myself and my inability to imagine anything not made explicit in the text). The art and set direction kept everything gray and covered in ash. This bland background made the flashback sequences with the Woman (Charlize Theron) more powerful, with pastel colors giving a sense of life before the world decayed beyond repair.

I cannot say enough about how impressed I am with Viggo Mortensen's portrayal of the Man. Although his acting is not over-the-top in this movie, it is perfect for the role he plays. And for a movie that spends ninety percent of its time focused on two characters, the minor characters were critical for making this film great. Robert Duvall's portrayal of the Old Man is heartbreakingly beautiful, tears welling in his eyes as he recalls the ultimate fate of his absent son. Guy Pearce expertly suggests his trustworthiness with subtleness but clarity.

The biggest problem this movie had was the narrative structure - the fact that it had a clear one. In the book, McCarthy was able to convey a sense of timelessness, or, rather, a lack of time. Every gray day blends into one another, and there is no way of distinguishing each. There's no sense of order to the days. Yet, because of the linear nature of a movie, this movie takes on a timeline that the book does not have. This is the film's biggest artistic departure from the book.

I highly recommend this movie. Everyone should read the novel first, of course. My only warning is that you need to be prepared to suffer through a pretty deep, depressed mood for a while after the end (even though it ends on a hopeful note).