23) The Road

The Road (2009)

Director: John Hillcoat

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smitt-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce

Went to see The Road today with friend yesterday. I'd been quite keen to see it as it had got some big raps from a number of critics. But despite the fact that it was only released here at the end of January, it was very difficult to find anywhere that was showing it, or at least showing it more than once a day.

In a desolate, post-apocalyptic America that has all but run out of food, a nameless father (Mortensen) and son (Smitt-McPhee) journey south, towards the coast. In this hellish existence in which they are forced to scavenge for food and are constantly in hiding from gangs who have turned to cannibalism in order to survive, it is only the fathers love for his son and the need to protect him and teach him to protect himself which sustains him.

The Road was shot on a relatively small budget of US$20million which means that the filmmakers had to take a slightly different approach to presenting a post-apocalyptic world than other higher budget projects have chosen to in the past. Rather than looking at the big picture, the film operates on a much simpler, smaller scale. It is just about this father and son, and their direct experience as they walk the earth. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smitt-McPhee do an incredible job of carrying this film. They are on screen for well over 90% of the film. In fact there is not a scene in the entire film in which one or both of them is not present. The other characters in the film only play minor roles either in flashbacks or in passing encounters.

Unlike movies like Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior which present the post-apocalyptic world as an action-packed place, The Road presents a much more bleak and dire depiction. The film takes place about a decade after the apocalypse has occurred and in that time humanity has been stretched to it's limits. Many, including the boys mother (Theron) have opted for suicide long ago. Those who remain do so by making survival their sole priority. Thus they scavenge and steal, and many have turned to cannibalism. Humanity's moral code has been abandoned and while the father is determined to imbue some sort or morality in his son, assuring him that they are "the good guys", in a number of situations we see just how much he has had to compromise his own values in order to survive. It is also a world presented without hope. Things are not going to get better. The father and son have left their home out of realisation that they couldn't survive another winter there and that it was only a matter of time before the cannibalistic groups found them. They decide to head south, towards the coast, but with no specific goal in mind. It is not a case of "If we can only make it to the coast everything will be alright." The father is only too aware that what they will find there is no different to what they have seen everywhere else. This seeming lack of hope makes for a very challenging experience for the viewer, as hope that everything will be alright in the end is usually one of the main desires one experiences in viewing a film.

Because this film is not trying to look at the big picture in it's depiction of this post-apocalyptic world, there are a lot of questions which go unanswered. Primarily is the question of the nature of the apocalypse that has occurred. The destruction of the earth is not shown on screen, all we see is a flashback scene in which the father is at home and notices a fiery orange glow and the sounds of people screaming coming from behind his drawn curtains. We are told that all plant life and pretty much all animal life has died, which makes one think that maybe it was a nuclear war, but the people we encounter during the film, despite being dirty and starving, have nothing wrong with them to suggest exposure to radiation. At the end of the day, that is not what the film is about. Hillcoat is not seeking to give the audience a warning about the dangers of nuclear war or global warming or anything. What happened to create this situation is irrelevant. The story is about the here and now for this father and son and how they deal with it. So as you watch the film it is important not to let yourself get bogged down in those sorts of 'why' questions.

I was quite surprised that this film was completely overlooked when the Oscar nominations came out. It has been getting consistently positive reviews, so is obviously a critical favourite, and being based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote No Country for Old Men, it had the respectable foundation to make people take notice. The two leads, Mortensen and the young Smitt-McPhee were very good and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe had already received a nomination for best cinematography at the BAFTAs, and none of them would have been out of place if they had received a nomination from the Academy. I had originally thought that maybe the film didn't come out in time to make the cut for this years Oscars, but it turns out it received a limited release in the USA in November 09 which was well before a number of the films which are up for awards. I guess it just wasn't their year.

By all reports this film is not quite as full on as the novel on which it was based, but none the less it is still quite a heavy film. It is beautifully shot, in a tragic kind of way, and the performances are top notch, but this is definitely not a film for everyone.