The movie The Road, based on the book by
Cormac McCarthy, was shocking even though
I knew what would happen next, and disturbing
even after having read each event in vivid detail.
This is because the filmmaking was executed
perfectly. Dark, gloomy, and filled with ash (as
much as the beginning of the book emphasized),
the hopeless wreckage of the man and the boy's
lives were perfectly depicted. The casting was
phenomenally done as well. Viggo Mortensen
and Kodi Smitt-McPhee captured the desperation
and fear of McCarthy's post-apocolyptic world. I could see
the hunger in their eyes, feel the dust of burnt out dreams on their
fingertips, hear the sound of their hollow emotions with every footstep.
The Road established this beautifully tragic sense of disaster; tragic in the raw and
brutal world of ruins that lay around them, but beautiful in the improbable hope
and light found in the character of the boy. Yes, McCarthy was the creator
of this character, but it was the creators of the film that truly brought
the boy to life, as well as McPhee himself, who was able to endow
in the boy the kind of crushing fear and sense of lost that makes
the audience almost taste it. The underlying current beneath
the fear, however, is a glimmer in the boy's eyes, some
telling way that he speaks, moves, and reacts that
somehow communicates that he will survive. It is as
if he and the man are sacred, like they are carrying the
fire but it is more than a torch, it is an eternal flame. There
is only so much that can be communicated in unspoken words
and unused punctuation in McCarthy's writing. The movie, however, speaks volumes for the little humanity that remains in the world of the man and the boy. This sense of goodness, contrasted with the horrifyingly vivid images of burned corpses, or, even worse, the half eaten
And very much alive people found in the basement of a cellar. This imagery,
unable to be truly captured in the pages of the book, make the movie so
much more real. From the eerie quiet, to the uncensored filth of the
human body, the filmography of The Road makes it one of the
most frightfully honest and accurately depicted movies,
both as a book adaption, as well as on it's own,
of today's dystopian-obsessed youth era.
PS. The Road reminds me of the lyrics to that Justin Timberlake song...
"I turn my head to the East,
I don't see nobody by my side,
I turn my head to the West,
Still nobody in sight
So I turn my head to the North
Swallow that pill that they call pride
That old me is dead and gone
But that new me will be alright
Oh, Ive been travelin' on this road too long
Just tryna find my way back home
The old me is dead and gone
Dead and gone"
