Watching The Road, one gets the sense that the material – here, the story of a father and son surviving the end of the world as we know it, having originated in Cormac McCarthy's award winning novel of the same name – isn't one best suited by the cinematic treatment, and that to remove it from the page (where words can ignite thoughts and burn extensively in the mind in ways that cinema rarely achieves) is to automatically lessen the impact. In visual form, The Road almost can't help but become a subdued action movie, an awkward fit for what should otherwise be a character study chamber piece that emphasizes emotions over spectacle. Due to the director's prolonged effort to cut the film, The Road lingered in post-production for over a year, and although flawed, the film is nevertheless challenging and rewarding, demanding repeat viewings for the full experience to be processed and appreciated.
Viggo Mortensen as The Father
If The Road is an act of flawed greatness (only hindsight really sheds light on these things), it is most certainly (and misguidedly) so in its nearly unrestrained attentiveness to its performers. As the protective father (known only as The Father; names have been jettisoned from this vision), Viggo Mortensen is in bravura emotional territory, but like the cast entire (excellent from Smit-McPhee, as his son, down to the bit parts; Robert Duvall in particular is stunning), he’s allowed too much time in the spotlight when slightly more focus on their altogether unique surroundings would provide a more emotionally conducive window into their experience (a touching moment in which Mortensen examines a broken hair clip cuts away to the actor’s face too quickly, denying adequate audience rumination).
This frightening post-apocalypse is likely more realistic a potential future than any other yet put on film, transpiring in the final stages of a Children of Men-like scenario in which life on earth is approaching total extinction and no reversal seems possible. Here, we don't know what exactly brought about man's downfall (save for the fact that it originated in mankind's misdoings), and are simply along for the sick, horrifying ride had by those who survived the initial, devastating changes. The world promises little more than a slow, certain death for all; against this apparent doom, the film focuses on the lingering human spirit, the “fire” that's carried inside.
John Hillcoat Directs The Road with Spare, Simple Visuals
John Hillcoat directs with spare emotional fervor, capturing events with fairly simple compositions that often suggest unmanned cameras placed in hiding spots, edited together as functionally and poetically as possible (the editing methods help to create and sustain this fly-on-the-wall effect, sometimes suggesting stock footage being used to bridge the gaps of other, incomplete shots; see the awesome tree-falling-POV shots). This provides us with little in the way of a sense of place, which is at first dramatically unsatisfying, but eventually proves deeply reflective of the physical and emotional viewpoints of our frazzled protagonists.
In evoking human reliance on civilization, The Road is devastating, from Charlize Theron's (“The Mother”) haunting fall from grace to Smit-McPhee's amazement at that which came before (the discovery of an intact Coke can is the closest the film ever gets to cute). A fitting double feature would include this and the little-seen 2006 faux-documentary Ever Since the World Ended, in which humanity's population is deeply crippled but survives; each film serves as both a thoroughly fleshed-out scenario and an implicitly inquisitive lens into our own cultural values and purpose. In that film, young people talk about what they think “god” meant in the time before, etc.; The Road's father/son pair struggle together to remain the “good guys” (amidst the largely cannibalistic final vestiges of humanity), and routinely pray to the departed who have helped or inspired them, suggesting a tenuous connection with an afterlife that transcends simple religion.
For them, little hope can be vested in a happy ending, but the slowly eroding vessel of the human spirit is one routinely profound to watch as Mortensen gives it his all in a performance sadly unrecognized at last year’s major awards ceremony. Depending on each other (if for somewhat different reasons), Father and Son regard each other with godlike awe, culminating in a sequence of raw feeling that shames most films with the audacity to consider themselves tearjerkers. Horrifying in its bleak considerations, The Road is often as gut-level terrifying as anything in the horror genre, but like WALL-E, Children of Men, and The Terminator before it, it is also an illuminating vision of the hope that endures.
- Director: John Hillcoat
- Screenplay: Joe Penhall
- Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker, Garrett Dillahunt, Brenna Roth, Michael K. Williams
- 119 minutes, Rated R, 2009
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