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Posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 20:05:41 GMT by: Bob Doto
Posted under: post apocalyptic movie review drama

Year: 2009
Directors: John Hillcoat
Writers: Joe Penhall & Cormac McCarthy
IMDB: link
Trailer: link
Review by: Bob Doto
Rating: 8 out of 10

I judge every disaster film by one standard: facial hair. For instance, if during the apocalypse you take every opportunity to nix that end-of-the-world-stubble off your face, because God forbid you, the actor, look bad in a film, than I’m filing you under “Sucker.” Remember that scene in 28 Days Later when the handsome bed-headed lead wakes up to the most horrible of possible life sentences, including a pair of dead parents, and then runs into a bunch of other good looking girls and guys, and the first thing he does is shave off his five o’clock shadow? That was annoying. In THE ROAD, the ultra-human “Papa,” played humbly and heartfully by Viggo Mortensen, doesn’t shave his beard. But he almost does. And for me, therein lies a meta-tension.

In John Hillcoat’s THE ROAD, a sludgey apocalyptic tale of bonding between father and son, every inch of all that is potential geological mayhem has erupted (eerily set off screen) and has lead to the unraveling of Earth’s entire ecosystem. The threads that have kept the social fabric from disintegrating are no longer in place. Everything is dead. Trees are dead. Animals are dead. People have been reduced to parasitic subhumans. The Earth is hemorrhaging, literally cracking open, burning itself into something new, ridding itself of the failure that is humanity. Amidst this destitution a father and his son are walking south, pulling a cart, hiding from everyone. Like a tooth ache, you want the misery to go away, but secretly you indulge in the pain as it reminds you of how you used to be

For those of you who do not know, THE ROAD is based on a novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. The film is a stand-up retelling of McCarthy’s tale with only one exception: back story. One of the most notable aspects of McCarthy’s novel is the overt lack of background information. We’re in a vacuum, and no one is, or ever was, pretty. With the exception of maybe two pages of flashback, the reader is immersed in the home stretch of decay from the very beginning. Hillcoat chose to play with what could lay in the memory of Papa, and took advantage of the abilities of South African native Charlize Theron who play’s Papa’s wife. At first I was down on the broken family theme. It seemed like a weak effort to bring beauty to a story that thrives on its absence, a sort of “Now this is what really sucks about the apocalypse” add-on. I was preferring the novel’s minimalist approach to history over what appeared to be the film’s fleshing out of the pleasant bits. Ultimately, however, I was converted. Theron’s performance as “Wife” is so soulfully destroyed, she comes across more monster than spouse. That was an angle I hadn’t expected, and was glad to have witnessed.

But, there’s always that itch to sell an extra seat, and total implosions of the social rarely do. Truth be told, I’d hate to have been Hillcoat making this film. Big films have a horrendous record of taking a book’s subtle and internal tension, and farting it all over the silver screen in a boom of irrelevance (I Am Legend, anyone?). However, Hillcoat never gives into the demon of sensationalism, though he definitely flirts with it, if, ironically, in subtle ways. Take for instance Hillcoat’s handling of the “bad people.” As in the book, the bad people in the film are those who have succumbed to the lowest forms of their animal nature. They hunt, rape, and subsequently eat other human beings. In the film, all too often these people are portrayed just skew of goofy Southern yokles, nodding, for my liking, too close to a parroting of Deliverance. Of course Hillcoat never sinks to the depths of Mark Young’s Tooth and Nail, where bad people sharpen their teeth and wear silly face paint, but Hillcoat’s cannibals do have a slight caricature-ness to them. Not too much, but I can feel the pull to go there.

But, I’m a forgiving person. I know there are influences behind The Road other than Hillcoat’s, and I’m sure some of those people would’ve loved this film to fall into Fantasy Land, but to Hillcoat’s credit he holds on tight. For example, his take on that most intense of basement scenes is handled with such care and reserve I thought I might actually be reading the novel itself, instead of watching it redone. Hillcoat must have known it all along: what could you possibly show to send that particular ounce of carnage home any more than it already does on its own?

In the end I felt content with the butterflies this film left in my stomach. With supporting and fantastic performances by both Robert Duvall, done up to be as grizzled as a Civil War boot, and an exactly-what-I-wanted performance by Guy Pearce to sew the whole experience shut, I’d say you’re bound to leave the theater pleased with the quality of the film, hoping to God the world doesn’t go down like that, and calling your loved one so you can snuggle up cozy with them in bed. Remember, the Earth is badder than you could ever be. Do not mess with Her. You will lose.

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