Review: The Road

It seems a bit precious to talk about how studio politics can muck up a well-intentioned film but there is really no other framework to discuss John Hillcoat's The Road. After testing horribly with key demographics, Dimension Films shelved the film for over a year. After much public acrimony, recriminations, forced re-shoots and re-edits, the film emerges with a slightly cheerier ending than originally intended and an Oscar-baiting release strategy of doling out the film at prestigious film festivals (Venice, Telluride, Toronto) with a late November theatrical release date.

The Road, based on Cormac McCathy's novel, centers on a father and son (Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee, billed only as "The Man" and "The Boy") after an unexplained catastrophe has left the world a bleak, lawless place. The few remaining survivors constantly struggle for food while remaining in hiding from roving gangs of cannibal rapists. As the film starts, the Pair Without a Name (or much in the way of camping skills) are slowly making their way by foot to the coast to head South for warmer climates.

The film is clearly made with tremendous talent and skill (there may not be a better looking film this year) but passions that have been watered down by too many special interest groups. The first half feels stretched to the point of nonsense by too many opposing elements: a director clearly fond of the source material (and his previous film The Proposition proved he's well-suited to the themes of doomed familial responsibility), a terrible actor trying to win an Oscar (please do not reward yet another bout of blacked out teeth and life-endangering weight loss in the name of awards, Academy) and a studio trying to make a feel-good movie about the end of the world.

But the lack of a strong hand to guide this relentlessly bleak subject matter ultimately condemns The Road's fate. Without any meaningful subtext or a compelling backstory, the novel's vignette-style plays like an endless loop of innocent curiosity. Which leads to heinous child endangerment, then to a narrow escape and a pat morality lesson delivered by The Man and The Boy, who offer teary-eyed pledges to "always be the good guys". For a film about the animalistic nature of man, where the threat of child rape lingers constantly, the lack of male frontal nudity feels like a real copout.

And speaking of uneven, the film is filled to the brim with shameless product placement. It goes to show that in our celebrity-obsessed culture, a famous person holding a can of soda as a lifeline to man's diminished promises will sell, regardless of the backdrop. Equally problematic is the reliance on flashbacks to The Man's period of normalcy. The constant reminder of amber-tinted days when he and his wife (played by Charlize Theron) were courting, home childbirthing and eventually making a suicide pacts makes The Road feel like the most tedious break up movie ever made. 

All of which brings us to the abysmal, cinematic void that is Viggo Mortenson. Right now, Mortenson is best known in the public realim for (a.) being taken to court for unpaid child support soon after the Lord of the Rings franchise left him a millionaire several times over and (b.) self-publishing his poetry. For my money, these are equally repulsive character traits and do not lend themselves well to open-ended stories where so little content is being provided that the viewer is forced to project their own understanding of his internal struggle for goodness.

Essentially, we're left with a film that has gummed the source material with too much hokum to appeal to the literary set, too much moral rhapsodizing to keep horror fans from getting bored and too much cannibalism and child rape for Academy Award believers. While watching the film I was reminded several times of Lynne Littman's Testament, a masterpiece of the Family Apocalypse canon. Littman showed the drudgery of daily existence when life is expunged of modern appliances and hope -- replete with horrible things happening to children. However, with that film the horror and dread is experienced by the viewer. The Road makes us feel like helpless passengers on a journey of soul-sucking despair with no larger purpose other than too many people sat in too many meetings.

Comments

[James McNally]

Just as I suspected. I even found the book had a too hopeful ending, so didn't hold out much, er, hope for a truly dystopian film. I was annoyed by the flashbacks in the trailer, so don't think I'll be seeing the film at all.

And I've been a huge fan of Testament ever since I saw it in the theatre when it came out. Hard to believe we all grew up afraid of nuclear war and not random terrorists. I wonder what difference it will make to kids growing up now?

[Erin D.]

hey Beth, I have seen Time of the Wolf though it's been a while. If I remember the ending doesn't get much rosier.

[Bethanngallagher.wordpress.com]

Have you ever seen "Le Temps du Loup" or "The Time of the Wolf"? I haven't seen or read "The Road", but your review makes me think of that other film. Some unexplained catastrophe that turns water bad and necessitated livestock being burned causes a French family to flee a city to their country home, but they tragically discover things are no better there than in the city, and further horrors occur as they try to return and wait for a train that may never arrive. I couldn't watch the film to its end.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324197/