Surely, never has the bleak, woebegone, wretched aftermath of the apocalypse been so spell-binding.
The whiners may complain that The Road does not rise to the level of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning eponymous novel on which the movie is based (say, which movie ever lives up to the book) but don’t count us among the surprised if the movie comes up high among the Oscar contenders in the coming months.
Powered by solid performances by the lead pair and propelled by a novel story, The Road (directed by John Hillcoat) is one of the most fulfilling movies we’ve seen this quarter.
Plumped for The Road
Even after reaching New York City, we were in two minds yesterday: To watch The Road or see the new Clint Eastwood-directed, Morgan Freeman-starring film Invictus.
Finally, we decided on The Road because we had already read McCarthy’s fine book and since we like Viggo Mortensen more than Morgan Freeman.
So off we headed to AMC 25 in midtown Manhattan to watch The Road.
There were about 40 people for the 11:20AM show. Not bad for an early show on a cold Saturday (or maybe it was the lure of $6 tickets before 12PM).
Faithful Tale
Essentially hewing to the story in the book, The Road is the moving account of a father (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they make their way south (to escape the harsh winter) in the aftermath of an unexplained apocalypse that has taken most life-forms with it including the larger part of the homo sapiens.
Bleak is the picture you see on the screen.
The trees are leafless, car wrecks are littered across the landscape, tis’ bitter cold but fires rage along the ridges above and there’s gray dust everywhere.
Must be the gray dust from the ashes of a great, devastating, all consuming fire.
Constant rain and rumbling earthquakes that shake the ground violently add to the grim ambience.
As the father explains in the early minutes of the film:
The clock stopped at 1:17. There was a long shear of bright light and a series of little concussions.
For the few human survivors left, survival is a hobbesian struggle since there’s little food left for the crops are all long gone.
And the road ahead is metaphorically and literally a hard struggle. Continue reading »
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