The Road

There are only a few things in the world that give movies a run for their money in terms of my personal entertainment. Sports. Music. Books. That's pretty much it. So when a movie comes along that's based on one of my favorite books of all time, I'm in. The Road, of course, being based on a novel of the same name by brilliant and eccentric author Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy is a genius. For those of you who don't know, he also wrote No Country for Old Men which the Coen brother's brought to the screen back in '07 to the tune of 4 Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, best supporting actor, and best adapted screenplay. Those are 4 serious awards. It's not like they won best sound mixing and costume design. Another of McCarthy's novels, Blood Meridian, is rumored to be in preproduction for a 2011 release. It takes an interesting type of novelist to write books that are adaptable to movies. Some guys have made a career out of it, namely John Grisham and Michael Crichton. With those two guys, it's almost like they wrote screenplays and then just decided to turn their scripts into books first. I guess I can't complain though. The two of them brought us The Firm, Jurassic Park, Twister, The Rainmaker, and A Time to Kill (Matthew McConaughey's only good movie happens to be a great one) among about a dozen other's. But those two guys are mega-commercial. And if you add JK Rowling's Harry Potter movies, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, and Nicholas Sparks' chick-flicks into the mix, you'd be hard pressed to find a novel to film adaptation that wasn't an incredibly popular book. That's why McCarthy is so interesting. He's sort of a weird guy. His books are dark. Like really dark. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. Not a pop star. He's a complete recluse, having given only a handful of interviews in over 25 years. But his books are compelling. So very compelling.

The Road takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. And while we're never really told what exactly happened, it's pretty safe to assume there was some sort of nuclear fallout. Everything on the planet has been wiped clean. All animals and vegetation are dead. A blanket of ash covers everything. And most of the very few people who are left alive have resulted to barbarism. Cannibalism even. Gangs of men rove the barren streets murdering, raping, stealing. Trying to survive. There is no color. Anywhere. The world is bleak, dark, and cold. It's truly a worst case scenario for this planet and for mankind. The plot is simple and the characters are few. A father and son head South towards the ocean. They're nameless and referred to in both the credits and the original novel only as the Man and the Boy. That's the first thing that strikes you. There's not a single character in the entire movie who has a name. It's as if names aren't important. Any past identity has been deemed irrelevant.

The Man, played by Viggo Mortensen of Lord of the Rings fame, is grizzled, protective, weary, suspicious. Whereas the Boy, played by newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee, is somber, afraid, but yet still curious and hopeful. It's this dynamic that provides much of the driving force of the movie. The Man has a responsibility to protect his son. But it's more than that. It's greater than a responsibility. It's greater than an obligation. It's more of a calling. A commission. A task of paramount importance. After the Man kills a gang member, played by a guy who's name you won't know but who's face I guarantee you'll recognize, who tries to attack the Boy, the Boy asks the Man if they're the good guys. If they will always be the good guys. And while the Man's answers in the affirmative seem to satisfy the Boy somewhat, he still seems uneasy. (Back to that "guy who's name you won't know but who's face I guarantee you'll recognize" bit. I love that. I love recognizing people in movies and even being able to name three or four things that they've been in but still have no idea what their name is. I always wonder if that person considers them self famous. I mean, I know who they are, I just don't know their name. Do you have to know a person's name for them to be famous? There are all kinds of people who I'd recognize and even want to take a picture with or something whose names I don't know. I'd just call them by their character. Is that a bad idea? I don't really care. If I see Rickety Cricket or Mr. Eko running around somewhere, I'm stopping them and taking a picture.)

One particularly interesting aspect of the movie is the use of timeline shift. The Man had a wife and the Boy had a mother. And several times, the timeline shifts back to an earlier point of post-apocalypse where the Man, the Woman, and the Boy were still living together at their home. The Woman, played by Charlize Theron of Moster, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and The Cider House Rules, thinks that the three of them should just commit suicide. end their lives and the constant struggle of life. The Man will have no part of it. Death is not the answer. To the Woman, however, it is the only option. In one of the most stirring scenes of the movie, she removes her coats and everything else shielding her from the bitter cold that seems to have enveloped the earth, and walks out into the utter blackness. Leaving her family behind and effectively killing herself.

Things happen in this movie that I honestly don't want to write about. Just some awful, awful things. Some portions of the film are so horrible that the viewer can do nothing but gaze with a somber and depressed disposition. But for every devastatingly awful moment, for every minute spent simply staring at the screen in silence, there is hope. In spite of all of the pain, the suffering, the struggle, the atrocity, this movie, or film as it should justly be called, the story still remains hopeful. And it's because of the Boy. The Boy, having really known no other life, judges every thing and every day against a baseline that to anyone who had lived before the fallout would be horrible. But because horror is normal, there can still be good. And that good really stands out. And even though the Man is jaded, he still teaches his son to find and seek out good. He tells him that he is "carrying the fire" inside of him. He treats him to a can of Coca-Cola. But he never lies to him. He admits his struggles and his downfalls. He is a really good parent. And because of that, the Boy still exhibits some of the wide-eyed wonderment one would expect out of a 10-year-old kid. The Boy even seeks to help other's whom he perceives as another one of the "good guys", including an ancient looking man, played perfectly by the great Robert Duval, an actor who's career achievements and seminal roles are so numerous that you should know exactly who I'm talking about without me giving you the resume cheat sheet like I usually do.

And that's the prevailing message. Amongst disaster, and tragedy, and atrocity, and some of the most inhumane behavior possible, in a world that does not resemble the world we live in today a single bit, good can exist. Good does exist. Did you catch that? Nothing is to evil. No situation is too bleak. No man is too desperate to deny the fact that good exists. I just think that's so amazing. It's so encouraging. The world is a crazy place man. I mean really crazy. We have unstable governments with nuclear weapons, civil war engulfing dozens of countries, more slaves on the planet now than at any other time in world history, and any number of other global and local calamities. A film like this can scare you. What if something like this isn't that far off'? I suppose I can't say for sure what I'd do. I'd like to think I would do the right thing. I'd like to think I'd be one of the "good guys". Good is out there. The word "hope" is used in the book of Job, a book that tells a story of despair, more than a dozen times. Hope is always out there, as long as you want to find it.

I highly recommend this film. I highly recommend this book. And I don't think you need to do one in particular before the other. Both are extremely eye opening and enthralling and devastating and uplifting in different ways. There are quite a few differences between the two, but I'm not a purist. That stuff never bothers me. This movie is really a must see. Just make sure you put yourself if the right state of mind first.