STUDIO: Sony
MSRP: $27.96
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 111 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
* Director’s Commentary
* Deleted and Extended Scenes
* The Making of The Road
* Theatrical Trailers
* Previews
The Pitch
Fallout 3: We Forgot To Put Quests In Edition
The Humans
dir. John Hillcoat
Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron
The Nutshell
Set after an cataclysmic event turns the world into a desolate wasteland, devoid of plant life, animal life, and the light of the sun, a father and son (Mortensen and Smith-McPhee) make their way across the country in search of civilization.
He had a choice: death, or take the kid to see the new Shrek movie. He chose wisely.
The Lowdown
Quoth Jodie Foster: A poet. They should’ve sent a poet. Because The Road exactly that: living, breathing, moving poetry. That’s more a statement of fact than anything else. John Hillcoat’s film has a lyrical quality to it that feels less like an adaptation of prose than attaching words and images to someone’s ambient post-apocalyptic concept album. Like, if Sigur Ros made a post-apocalyptic concept album.
I wish I could judge the film in the same way. If it was an album, I’d be able to point out which individual tracks are worth your valuable time downloading from ITunes, and which ones to skip. But as a film, The Road has a habit of keeping the viewer under an extremely oppressive blanket of desolation that only peeks to see daylight once, maybe twice. And oppressively bleak is one thing, but monotonously bleak is another entirely, and a film set in such a dead, lifeless place needs the respite, or even the new depths to sink to. As it stands, The Road is just a slow burn that fades out rather than leaving any sort of deep, lasting scars.
Most of America called it the apocalypse. Detroit residents called it “movin’ on up”.
And yet, I find it impossible to say it was a bad film, or even that it isn’t worth seeing, or even owning. Aside from a bit of dialogue at the tail end that gets a bit too on the nose for a film so mired in subtleties, the film is still a compelling view. It sets out to create a mood, a portrait of a time and place and specific situation, and Hillcoat succeeds. His cast is strong. At this point, it’s not surprising Viggo Mortensen is an engrossing actor, but he walks a thinner line here than he has in a while, playing a moral hypocrite with a heart of gold. Smit-McPhee has taken some heat for being an annoying little snot at parts where bloodshed is impossible, and I genuinely think the people with that complaint have never really been around kids long enough. The performance feels like a real boy confronted with these issues, and in the only way he knows how, he is trying to hold his father by his words when his actions don’t match.
The day eventually came when the World’s Most Interesting Man discovered JD. He was last seen scrawling “Fuck Beer” into the fist-battered hide of a polar bear with a fossilized archaeopteryx feather.
The three non-Mortensen name actors share top billing, but they’re really just cameos that stand out just because the rest of the human presence is so very sparse. The brief encounter we have with a nigh unrecognizable Robert Duvall is a great one, a moment of human honesty and clarity that should’ve signaled a change in tone, or ramped to a climax, but never does. Guy Pearce shares top billing, but his role as a really dirty Cletus the SlackJawed Yokel at the end is important, but really doesn’t amount to much.
Charlize Theron’s where things get thematically tricky, though. Her one big scene–of a mother making the decision to leave her family and face the apocalypse alone–comes and goes early, and she handles the complexity of that decision well. We hate her, rightefully so, but there’s just the right mix of regret to make us understand it, at least. The problem is, for the rest of her screen time, she’s a marital aid. Her sexuality is what Viggo seems to remember about her, and little else, which undercuts the emotional attachment Viggo has to his wife towards the start and a line Viggo says later on about dreaming about good things being a sign that you’re in trouble. If the sex is really the only thing you can conjure about your relationship, you were in trouble a long time ago.
The really tricky thing is that I think a more human element might shatter what John Hillcoat was trying to create with this thing. It’s a film without a depth, a subtext, or a high concept. It simply is. The Road isn’t there to engage you in a dialogue, or make you empathize, or take you on a ride. It simply confronts. It’s a window to look in on human nature stripped bare for 2 hours, and it’s importantly a window one should peek through at least once.
Seen here: The first post-racial jack ever recorded. Change has come to America indeed.
The Package
John Hillcoat’s on his own for the commentary. It’s dry, and Hillcoat struggles to fill time, but he mostly keeps things insightful from end to end. For those wondering, he does address the fetus-on-a-spit scene everyone won’t shut the fuck up about from the book. Oddly, the scene was filmed, but isn’t on the DVD.
Even sadder, since the rest of the stuff in Deleted Scenes were definitely cut for a reason. They add nothing. The Making Of is pretty standard. A couple of repeated anecdotes from the commentary, and the most unintentionally awesome pose/title moment you’ll see on a featurette ever, but not bad as far as EPKs go, and you do get a bit of Cormac McCarthy hanging out on set with his own kid, and even without hearing them, you can tell where so much of this story came from. After that, the two theatrical trailers, and a whole mess of trailers for other Oscar bait. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
9 comments
Great review but I must disagree about Viggo's character only remembering his wife in a sexual way. I didn't get that feeling at all from the film. From what I can remember, the memories show those moments when he was alone with her and just looking at her quietly, like he had everything he ever wanted in life. It's those moments that I remember about relationships as well. Those moments when your partner doesn't even realize what your thinking or that your staring at them with what feels like so much love in your heart it hurts. Whether it was him staring at her sleeping in the car on the beach or him watching her garden, I loved how they focused on those quiet, fleeting moments in the flashbacks instead of showing them laughing and frolicking. It feels real instead of corny like in most movies.
This was tied for my favorite movie of the year alongside Hurt Locker. I thought this was a shoe in come Oscar season but once everyone I knew started seeing it, I found I was the only one that liked it. It's a film that haunted me, much like Se7en, long after I left the cinema. It's one of those few films that leaves you feeling something at the end. I loved this film from start to finish – especially Smith-McPhee's performance. A lesser child-actor would've ruined the whole experience. No sense comment on Viggo's performance, he's solid like always. Hopefully this film will find it's audience on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Great review but I'm not too sure about the pic captions. They seem to force themselves like a necrophiliac post-career David Letterman writer. And is that last pic a screen from the dvd extras? This guy is over fifty, looks at least forty and is a great actor, so please give him a break. I didn't love this film but did appreciate its style and difference of approach, which is more of a striking realism. That said, I wanted more story and almost instantly felt starved for Duval once he left the screen. He killed that tiny little spot they gave him, skinned it, ate it raw, and then regurgitated it all over the audience. This movie is stark reality, not stock audience gratification. Question is was this fully intended or a semi-glorious accident? I would like to see more movies like this and ‘The American’. Only better.
Here's my point: THE ROAD is the classic example of the book that was meant to be a book. As Clark points out, it's mostly poetry with very little plot. Hillcoat's version is extremely well-realized, and you can dig it for its philosophy and its verisimilitude, but it's hard to avoid the fact that NOT ENOUGH HAPPENS to sustain two hours of uninterrupted film. Also, as long as we're on the topic, I wonder how much McCarthy's postapocalyptic imagery here might effect Miller's new MAD MAX movies? It's hard not to see this thing's fingerprints all over something like THE BOOK OF ELI…so, will the new MAX get more bleak, or more Hollywood?
"Fallout 3: We Forgot To Put Quests In Edition" –hahaha
I was thoroughly annoyed at the need to give any kind of explanation for the apocalypse. The wife came off as a selfish cunt. And the softening of scenes like the basement of "human food" which should have been really disturbing, ended up being an afterthought.
@Chris: What need to explain the apocalypse? It wasn't explained at all.
The shot of the savages' shadows as they chanted and danced or whatever in the house at night literally scared me. I finally saw The Road the other day and I really, really enjoyed it.
@6 Missed the point entirely. You want some apocalyptic exposition go see a fucking Roland Emmerich movie.
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