Reviews - The Road & The Messenger

When Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road was released, an odd thing happened. Despite being a brutally bleak story about a man in a post-apocalyptic world doing anything possible to keep his son alive, the book became a hit. Certainly tales of misery were popular before but rarely do they become such a phenomenon. Now, an even odder happening is occurring. Director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) and screenwriter Joe Penhall (Enduring Love) have thrown McCarthy’s unrelenting text onto the screen with care and a genuine vision, yet in the translation, many have now found fault with the tale’s lack of a more complicated narrative. It is a strange situation to see.

Hillcoat’s version of The Road is thoroughly enriched by McCarthy’s words and ideas. Days go by like a curse, with one sadly following another. Time awake is spent seeking out the world’s last remnants of food and trying to avoid becoming someone else’s. Money lines street corners, walked over like the rotting bodies. Viggo Mortensen, truly one of cinema’s finest actors, is our protagonist, a soul simply known as Man. His wife is long dead, his body is bruised to the bone but he keeps marching south to the coast, hoping to find any sort of refuge from the hellish land for a child called merely Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee). In the pair’s relentless trek, the Man must not only protect the Boy, he must train him to live alone. Man’s body can only go on for so long.

The Road avoids all sentimentality. This is not a post-apocalyptic venture into the rebuilding of democracies, family or neighborhoods. There is no political battle over right and wrong, where the downtrodden finally rebel against their fascist masters. The Road is far more primal. In a person’s search for warmth and food, one thing defines the good guys from the bad guys, cannibalism, or so Viggo’s Man claims. He preaches this to the young one during their journey, as if saying it over and over again makes it true. The movie’s best scenes come when this simplicity of good or evil is tested. The pair flees a house full of captured men and women, chained up for the slaughter by a group of hungry survivors. No second is spared on the thought of their rescue. This world can only be lived in by looking out for your own, at least by Man’s words; the boy believes differently.

Hillcoat’s camerawork is spare, avoiding flashy maneuvers, while keeping the pace at an almost monotonous beat. The Road brings to mind David Fincher’s fantastic work Zodiac, which turned many off at first with its insistence on repetition. Every location here looks the same, with ashen trees collapsing, barren houses and distant fires. Scenarios of terror bleed together for they are not these two traveler’s first encounter with them. One can feel the cold these characters are suffering from. Equally, the briefest flashes of joy, from a can of Coke to a beautiful couch cushion, is to be celebrated. The score, which has been derided by many, is a beautiful one by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, matching the morose nature of the visuals. Unfortunately, Hillcoat places these gorgeous melodies in a few moments where silence would have worked better, the movie’s only true misstep.

As for the acting, of course Mortensen is amazing. He has an almost ethereal quality that is rooted in ruggedness. The suffering he goes through in The Road, most evident when teaching the Boy how to commit suicide, is almost unbearable. Smit-McPhee holds his own as the kid who doesn’t know a world before this horrific one. Small parts by both Robert Duvall and Garret Dillahunt stir up respect and fear in equal measure. The care these two give to such small roles are a fine example of Hillcoat’s movie, a remarkable achievement that will hopefully achieve the respect it deserves in the years to come.

The Road is now open all across Seattle.

In Oren Moverman’s The Messenger, Ben Foster is Staff Sergreant Will Montgomery, an Iraq War veteran with a bad eye, slight limp and a new job. For his remaining time in the military, Will is set be a member of the Casualty Notification Team. The new assignment doesn’t please him, nor does his co-worker Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson). Tony shows Will the ropes, teaching him that when informing next of kin about a soldier’s death never use the words “lost” or “not with us.” You are to be direct with your language and you are never to physically contact the bereaved. The last rule Will breaks when he meets Olivia (Samantha Morton), a widow with a small house and child.

Moverman’s film, his directorial debut that he co-wrote with Alessandro Camon, is in intriguing if flawed one. The core problem is significant though and that is Foster’s performance. A talented actor, Forster is overly calculated here as a soldier coming to terms with a new place in his life. His interactions, minus the ones with the always-reliable Morton, are too thought and static. Every word and monologue flows like that of an actor on stage, not a frayed struggling man.

On the other hand, Harrelson is phenomenal here, proving again why his talents should be more recognized. His character is great at his job and picking up women but struggles with everything else, exemplified by his three divorces with only two women. His braggart attitude is a mask, one that falters when properly prodded. Harrelson breaking down and weeping when learning of Will’s painful past is The Messenger’s pinnacle achievement, a brief glance at a strong man’s relentless inner turmoil. It is one of the few unexpected moments in a picture that lacks a proper pace or direction.

The Messenger opens today exclusively at Landmark’s Seven Gables.