The End of The Road

The Road is the new film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's book. McCarthy's last book to be adapted for the screen, No Country for Old Men won the Oscar for Best Picture two years ago. The Road is very different and not just because it isn't directed by the Coen brothers. This is an end of the world story much like I am Legend, where the world as we know it has ended. In I am Legend, a plague has killed almost everyone and for a long stretch, the main character played by Will Smith, is the only character in the movie. Multiply the number of survivors by two and you have The Road. In this new movie, civilization has also been destroyed and most people have died. But we never find out what actually happened.

This film tells the story of two survivors of the holocaust, a man (Viggo Mortenson) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who are literally on the road, trying to find a way south where it is warmer and where there might be a better chance of surviving. The weather is certainly bad. It seems to be raining and cold all the time. Most of the movie deals with the father's desperate attempts to save his son. This is all he is living for. We learn in flashbacks that his wife and the son's mother (Charlize Theron) was pregnant around the time of the disaster, and after giving birth could not deal with what was left of the world. So the man was left alone with his son. On the road, they meet very few people. Those they do meet include, a gang of marauders (including Garret Dillahunt), an old man (Robert Duvall), and a young couple (Guy Pearce and Molly Parker). These other characters, even when played by well known actors, appear only briefly in cameos.

The director, John Hillcoat is yet another director from down under. The Road is his second movie. He recently directed Guy Pearce (another Australian) in The Proposition, an outback outlaw movie. Hillcoat is yet another director who started out directing music videos, in particular Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (you guessed it. they are Australian). They do the score for The Road which is pretty appropriate since their music is pretty dirge-like. I like Nick Cave a lot. He is on my iPod.

The Road has a very small cast. Most scenes are just Mortenson and Smit-McPhee. The latter is making his first feature film. They are both excellent and have a good chemistry together. Mortenson and Theron, two very good looking actors, do their best to look haggard, desperate and down on their luck. I almost didn't recognize Robert Duvall, who plays a sick old man they meet on the road. His one scene was almost over before I realized who he was. Duvall, Dillahunt, Pearce and Parker are hardly on screen enough to make an impression. I wish they had been given more screen time. The biggest supporting cameo concerns a thief (Michael K. Williams) who steals the cart carrying all of Mortenson's belongings.

The action in this movie is set against a stark, almost dead world. Much of the movie is shot in rural areas in Oregon and near Mount St. Helen's. But for the urban scenes, the locations chosen were Pittsburgh and New Orleans. Of course, parts of New Orleans really are post-apocalyptic and post-industrial. The Road is determinedly low key. This film is a really mood piece and the mood isn't good. You feel the weight bearing down on Mortenson in every scene as he tries to find food each day just to keep his son alive. And also as he tries to bring some semblance of a normal life to his son, reading to him a bedtime out in the middle of nowhere. You have the feeling as you watch The Road that there can't be a happy ending but it comes close. There is an uplifting message like that given by I am Legend. The message is, that even when the veneer of civilization is scraped away, it is still possible to remain human. It is Smit-McPhee as Mortenson's kindly son who is constantly reminding his father of this as they walk down the road. This is a very good film. Go see it.