Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winner gets a successful film adaptation.
I first came across The Road in a Paris bookstore in 2008. I loved the film adaptation of his earlier novel, No Country for Old Men, so I decided to pick up his latest prize winner. I finally got around to reading it a few months later and was entranced with its eerie, dreamlike portrayal of a world destroyed by an unnamed apocalyptic disaster. Inexplicably though, I never finished it. My girlfriend picked it up a while later, read it in a couple of days and it haunted her for weeks. Why didn’t I finish? I guess I couldn’t see how it would end with even a hint of optimism. That and I’m just slack. While I never finished it, the prose won me over with its sparse lyricism, powerfully evocating the nightmarish dystopia Boy and Father (they’re never named) have to navigate. One thing that struck me while reading it was that while it’s a fantastic book, I couldn’t see how it would ever be adapted into a movie.
When I first learnt of this adaptation I greeted it with hopes that maybe, just maybe they could find a way of working McCarthy’s prose into a movie format. Although as soon as I saw the first trailer that the Weinstein’s put out my hopes were dashed, as they were clearly marketing it as an apocalyptic blockbuster. Thankfully, the final product is a world away from my greatest fear – that we’d be greeted with a dumbed down Roland Emmerich style adaptation and instead it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Depressing, bleak and harrowing yet beautifully poetic.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so worried. Afterall, it’s directed by John Hillcoat, who had already proved his great understanding of man and landscape with The Proposition. It also stars the great Viggo Mortensen playing the role of Father and some excellent supporting actors. Yet even if the movie succeeds on its own, there’s still the inevitable question of how it compares to the novel. Well I can’t rightly say seeing as I never finished the whole thing, but from what I have read, the essence of it can be seen on screen. Especially thanks to some marvelous camerawork. No doubt people will complain about things added and removed but you can’t avoid that with a film adaptation.
While Hillcoat and his DOP, Javier Aguirresarobe nail the look, with the de-saturated images reflecting the bleak outlook for the characters the film would still fall down if the performances couldn’t hold up. As the father, Mortensen is brilliant. I haven’t seen him in much since Lord of The Rings but this work reminds me why he’s such a damn good actor. He’s totally convincing and looks like he’s shed a tonne of weight for the role (the crazy things method actors do). This is a man who has gone way beyond what any normal person could handle. This burden comes glaring out at us through his weary eyes but he constantly shields it from the boy. Boy, played by newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee has grown up in a world that’s almost too painful to imagine. Even a simple joy such as opening a can of coke and hearing the bubbles fizz is an unknown to him. If his performance here is something to go by, you can expect big things from him in the future. Robert Duvall pops up briefly as one of the few kind strangers they meet on the road, but you’d be lucky if you realised it was him, such is the strength of the makeup in carrying over the dehumanising aspect of their situation. Guy Pierce also pops up in a small, but strong role near the end.
The Road is a great movie, and the fact that it even comes close to the majesty of the book is a huge achievement. It asks the audience some uncomfortable questions. In their situation, how unwavering would your moral compass be? Sure you may hold onto your ethics for a while – maybe even a couple of years. But as time goes by you start to move the boundaries on what you’re prepared to do to survive. Once you’ve been pushed to the brink, it’s very hard to stop. I’d like to think Boy and Father still have their morality intact by the end of this but one particularly powerful scene towards the end of the film questions even this last bastion of optimism. If I see only a handful more movies of this quality in 2010, I’ll be a happy man.
4 1/2 Stars