Underneath the grit, grime, grey skies, and melancholy of THE ROAD, there is a heart to it, an overpowering optimism that stems from the energy a father gives in the love for his son. It is a hard world the father and son in this film live in, and, many times, it seems the end has come. You believe those moments, and it all stems from the power given by the film’s director and the actors involved.
THE ROAD tells an incredible story put to paper by Cormac McCarthy, the author who also gave us NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The titles and the stories they convey are interchangeable. Every character in THE ROAD is an old man in one form or another. They have each lived a long time in a world that has moved on and, seemingly, forgotten them. McCarthy’s novel, THE ROAD, is a masterpiece, and, for the most part, the film based on it, directed by THE PROPOSITION helmer John Hillcoat, keeps in step with its source material. There are faults here and there, and, unfortunately, they are noticeable. However, in the end, the film is a grand depiction of a barren world and the fire within all of us to keep living if not for ourselves then for those who depend on us.
Viggo Mortensen plays the father. Kodi Smit-McPhee of the upcoming LET THE RIGHT ONE IN remake plays his son. They travel across a post-apocalyptic America towards the coast, hoping to find some kind of salvation to the South. The conditions of the world have been caused by some, unseen event, and we get snippets of life right after the cataclysm in scattered flash-backs. The father and son move through their day-to-day lives, trying to survive the environment (periodic earthquakes let them know just much alive the planet still is), starvation and scurried band of cannibals that have long-since given up on the civil ways the world used to be.
Hillcoat’s recreation of the world McCarthy’s created in his novel is staggering, a triumph of desolation and earthy apocalypse. It is a cliché to say about a film with so much style that every shot could be a painting hung on the wall. It doesn’t make it any less true in the case of THE ROAD, a film so full of directorial style, it completely transfixes you away from how little happens in the film in terms of action. It isn’t a lie to refer to THE ROAD as an “edge of your seat” film, but the tension is derived from the quiet moments, the periods where you think all is well and the characters you have come to know are safe for the time being.
Though Hillcoat’s style and the way he perfectly captures the cold of the world (both in a literal and figurative sense), there are chinks in Hillcoat’s directing armor here. I’m not sure how deliberate it is, but the sense of direction is all off here. The lacking in the sense of time is, probably, deliberate. It’s easy to grasp how long the world has been the way it is based on the age of the boy, but we aren’t supposed to know how long events surrounding the father and son take. When they come across an underground bunker full of food, we aren’t really supposed to know how long they stay before deciding it is too dangerous. That element of the film is just an understanding in the way of this world.
However, we never really know where in the world we are. For a majority of the film, I was believing they were on the West coast working their way towards the Pacific coast. Late in the film, we are shown a map telling us they are, in fact, on the East coast working towards the Atlantic coastline. Hillcoat never gives us any sense of this before this scene. In fact, there is no rhyme or reason as to the direction the characters are moving in any, given scene. Sometimes they are moving towards screen right. Other times, they are moving towards screen left. When you stand back and look at it, this is a minor flaw in things. Unfortunately, it is quite a noticeable one, and it never fails in creating some bit of distraction from the story at hand.
One thing to help in this distraction, though, is how marvelous the performances are from everyone in the film, Mortensen in particular who ends up doing the best work of his career. He makes a believer out of you as to the love he gives his son, and you can almost tell just from the performance that Mortensen has children of his own. There are both scenes where Mortensen has to break down at the hardships he and his son are going through and scenes where he must become a harder man, a defender against the dangers slowly seeping in. I wouldn’t say Mortensen carries the film, because Smit-McPhee gives a performance that is just as gripping and substantial as Mortensen’s. These two actors together provide such a powerhouse of emotions that their performances alone make THE ROAD an emotionally challenging film.
Other notable roles come from Charlize Theron as the wife/mother of the pair, only seen in the flashbacks, and Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce as two men who the boy and his father meet in their journey. Everyone, even the always mentionable Garret Dillahunt as a member of a gang, does a superb job making the world of THE ROAD even that much more realistic.
Mention should also be given to both Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, who have crafted a musical score for THE ROAD that is just as moving as the work they did for THE PROPOSITION and THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. Their music is melancholy, almost depressing at times, but it, too, instills a sense of hope and an element of direction towards something greater.
It is strange to call a film like THE ROAD beautiful, a word that doesn’t, in and of itself, give a sense of the dour and dejected world shown here. It is a beautiful film, and it is because of the optimism Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall took from McCarthy’s novel. The original novel is a masterpiece, a triumph of survival and idealism as shown in a stark world. Hillcoat’s film doesn’t quite reach that same level of craftsmanship. Much of this comes from how forced everything seems to be in order to get everything into a two-hour film, and even more of this stems from Hillcoat’s diverting usage of direction. Nonetheless, THE ROAD is a powerful film. Though it is a hard one to travel, it is well worth the effort.
