The Road (John Hillcoat, 2009)

Depressing, Terrifying and Bleak: this is how the end of the world should feel.

John Hillcoat’s film based on the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is not for everyone. Like the book, spectators may find it unrelentlessly grim and moody; some may even find it tedious. It is a simple story set in the post-apocalyptic near future, about a father and son trying to get to the southern coast of America. It is 100 minutes that simply documents their attempts at survival in a barren land lacking in food and full of danger.

In Hollywood apocalyptic cinema seems to come in pairs (ironically like the animals in Noah’s ark). In 1998 Armageddon and Deep impact were realised within weeks of each other and both concerned mankind’s attempts to prevent an asteroid ending earth for one and all. In both films the good old reliable American Government stepped in and saved the day for the rest of us useless countries. Now in 2010 we have The Book of Eli (see my review) and The Road. Interestingly in this post 9/11 and global warming conscious society we live in, film makers have stopped looking at the reasons to end the world. In these pessimistic credit crunchy times, it appears to be taken as an inevitable fact that at some point we’re going to have to face that very event.

The Road begins one minute before the apocalyptic event, which is shown only by a warm glow outside the unnamed protagonist’s (known only as Father) house. Whatever it is, it has ravished the landscape and killed off most of the world’s population. Like The Book of Eli, the film makes no attempt to explain the cause of the anonymous cataclysmic event, but focuses on what happens after, and where the sources of hope lie. Despite its bleakness and overarching pessimism I found The Road to be far more moving, and in a way, uplifting, than Denzel Washington’s preach ‘em up.

In Hillcoat’s last film The Proposition you could feel the harsh heat of the Australian outback coming off the screen. The director along with his fantastic cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (who created moody emo feel in the Twilight films) creates as powerful a vision in this film. As Father and Son trudge through the mud, explore deserted towns and shelter away from the rain, the greyness and heavy wet air appear to wash over you. Using large panoramic shots, and uncomfortable close ups of their ever worsening ill and thin faces, I was immersed into a dystopian landscape with far greater affect than that of any 3D digital animation could ever achieve.

Their journey feels long, and occasionally due to the slow pacing the film can feel tedious, but never boring. There biggest worries are the simple things we take for granted, food, shelter and safety. It is this intimate, desperate and simple struggle that makes the film feel so realistic. Occasionally the pair encounters danger; the vast majority of the surviving humans are cannibals. Hillcoat never grants us full blown set pieces, but genuinely frightening moments where their lives feel at peril. One stunning sequence sees them come across a basement full of starving naked prisoners been kept for food. When the residents come home, an incredible quick, but stunningly tense chase sequence occurs. It is these brief moments that reminds the audience exactly how little chance of survival they have.

Viggo Mortensen is fantastic as the Father, and it is his determination to keep his son safe that gives this film an uplifting feel, making the unbearable journey bearable. Hope doesn’t come down to religion, or finding savour, it comes down to the knowledge that selfless acts still occur in the most desperate of times. When they do hit a good spot on their way to the coast, such as finding a can of coke, or a hot spring to bath in, they find a reason to keep on fighting. Hillcoat keeps these moments sparse, to ensure that the apocalypse still feels like the end of the world. Also brief are flashbacks to moments with the Fathers wife, played by Charlize Theron.

The film does have a slight misogynistic feel to it, as her determination to give up, and his determination to survive play off against each other. Another slight gripe is the use of voice over, quoting directly from McCarthy’s text. His novel is almost like an elongated poem, and the visuals do the book justice. However the very occasional use of voice over feels like it is just explaining things in case the audience hasn’t caught on, and this takes away from the quiet yet powerful tone of the film. There is very little spoken dialogue within the scenes, and Hillcoat should have had the guts to let his impressive visuals and the haunting (and occasionally terrifying) score do the talking without a voice over.

The film is about delaying the inevitable, death. When nearly everyone else in the world has died, how long can you battle on for? It is about struggle and more intimately it is about the relationship between a father and son. It is this intimacy that makes the film incredibly moving. The end does border on being slightly melodramatic, but I was so drawn into the story and struggle I didn’t care. It is a film that may frustrate as much as may move, but after experiencing the movie; you won’t want to ever experience life after the apocalypse.