The Road

Director : John Hillcoat

Writers : Cormac McCarthy (novel), Joe Penhall (screenplay)

Stars : Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert

Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker

Rating : 4 Stars

Few films are able to translate great literary sources into visual success. Audience disappointment usually comes due to high expectations – superbly written works transformed into dismal flicks. John Hillcoat’s interpretation of The Road, however, proves to be one of the rare exemptions to this celluloid rule.

Written by Cormac McCarthy, The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale that relates the perilous journey of a father and his son. What ended the world as we know it is unnamed as the event is only described as “…clock stopped at 1:17, there was a long sheer of bright light, then a series of low concussions” at the beginning of the film.

The Road has the ingredients of most movies of this genre – cannibalistic marauders, lifeless vistas, and the breakdown of morality amongst the few remaining inhabitants. But what keeps it apart and above the rest is its believability. Most viewers of this genre would usually shake their head at the impossibility of events following a certain cataclysmic event and probably would say, “This is not going to happen”. But The Road, in both its written and visual forms, attracts believability and elicits the question “What if this really happened?”

You don’t have to read the novel to appreciate the film but it will be a better viewing experience if you do. Both versions relay the strong bond between father and son (both unnamed in the book and film), the physical and emotional hardships they endure in order to survive, and both present the grim and scary prospect of the end-of-the-world scenario. The film’s cinematography is superb with the landscapes perpetually gray, cold, and desolate. Some scenes were shot in Louisiana in its post-Katrina state.

The man (played by Viggo Mortensen) and the boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) head towards a warmer climate, where it is hoped life exists. So they push southward towards the sea, and they are pushing before them a rickety supermarket trolley that carries their meager possessions and what little food they are able to scavenge along the way. If you happened to be drinking from a soda can with you while watching the film you’d feel really, really blessed.

Keeping alive and sane is a struggle for the two main characters. In the man’s possession is a gun with two bullets – the gun is both a flimsy safeguard against attackers and, more disturbingly, a weapon for their self-annihilation. The mother, played by Charlize Theron, loses the struggle as witnessed in film’s flashbacks.

Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall so sternly adhered to the Pulitzer-winning prose so don’t expect an overly sentimental film that delivers catharsis towards the end. True to its literary source, what you’ll get from The Road is mostly a foreboding and brutish viewing experience despite a hint of salvation at the film’s final scene. Guaranteed, however, are superlatives with regards to acting, cinematography, and scoring. Both Hillcoat and Penhall take the road less travelled; that is, coming up with a film that is valued for its aesthetics rather than its pecuniary performance at the box office.

McCarthy is a rich resource of Hollywood screenplays with other two of his novels, All The Pretty Horses and No Country For Old Men, translated into the big screen. Another novel, Blood Meridian, is tentatively due in theaters this year produced by Scott Rudin and written and directed by actor Todd Field.

A warning though for those who dislike religious references as you might find yourself squirming in your seat while watching some scenes of The Road. The boy, for example, is described as the one “carrying the light (inside)” and can be identified as the modern-day messiah. Also, Robert Duvall’s character The Old Man Ely, which by the way is the only named character in the film, has its biblical parallel in the name of – yes, you guessed right – the prophet Eli.