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Even if you've read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, it's shocking to see that world dramatized on screen.
Director John Hillcoat winces at the word "bleak," correctly insisting it doesn't apply to the movie's tender and touching father-son relationship, but it sure fits this frightening flash forward. So do desolate, desperate and post-apocalyptic but not in a "2012" commercial way.
- Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee.
- Rating: R for some violence, disturbing images and language.
- Web site: http://theroad-movie.com/
"I think it's October, but I can't be sure," The Man (Viggo Mortensen) says in the voiceover. "Each day is more gray than the one before."
Color and life have been leeched from the landscape by ... well, just as in the book, the cataclysm is never explained. But when the clocks stopped, so did life as we know it. Now all the touchstones of modern existence are gone; there are no cities, suburbs, farms, jobs, power, fuel, animals, crops or food, and precious little hope.
Dreams function as flashbacks, with Charlize Theron as The Man's wife in a time of leafy trees, golden flowers, a horse to nuzzle, a house to inhabit, a computer to use and, most importantly, a baby to anticipate.
But when The Man wakes up, he realizes the wife is gone, the baby is now a child (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and if they cannot find food, they will starve and if they cannot avoid the cannibals roaming the landscape, they will be killed and eaten.
No matter how weak or hungry they are, they vow they will not turn to cannibalism. They are "carrying the fire" inside and will not give up their humanity. In the simplest of terms the pair uses, they are the "good guys."
"The Road" tracks the father and son through close or harrowing encounters, moral tests, occasional glimpses or tastes of life as it once was, and heartbreaking separations. Hillcoat chose to weave in the after-effects of natural disasters -- from Katrina to Mount St. Helens, with a little help from some special or visual effects experts -- rather than draw on a nuclear winter wasteland.
It's tough going, but (as with "Precious") worth the effort thanks to the performances. Mortensen, his thin frame on view, and young Smit-McPhee are tremendous together.
The Man presents a calm, dogged air of determination for The Boy but in quiet moments he's contorted with pain at what and who he has lost. They are the equivalent of a spark and kindling; they ignite the core of this journey and film.
But if they are the light, many of the others are the darkness and the movie doesn't shy away from hunters who aren't looking for eight-point deer but for humans to imprison, rape or devour.
Writer Joe Penhall adapted McCarthy's book and he is rigorously faithful while cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe paints in shades of gray in Pittsburgh and elsewhere in Pennsylvania (including burned out Dreamland Ballroom at Conneaut Lake Park), Louisiana, Oregon and Washington,
The production removed jet streams and green trees and capitalized on the forests stripped of life by volcanic eruption. It layered on debris and ash and replaced the bright blue skies over New Orleans with a smoky, overcast canopy in a real IMAX shot of ships marooned on a highway.
"The Road" is being released at a time of year when many holiday moviegoers prefer their film fathers to be cut from the Robin Williams cloth and there's nothing wrong with that.
However, it will make you thankful for family and friends you take for granted, the job you love to hate, running water, heat, power, cars that break down but can run again, ridiculous amounts of food straining store shelves or rotting in gardens, and the comfort of knowing the trees that are barren now should turn green in the spring.
Traveling "The Road" is not easy but it is pocked with questions about how or if you could go on in such a sad, stripped down world. If ever a movie needed an angel such as Oprah Winfrey, who is otherwise engaged with "Precious," it is this one because it's good but grim.
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