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The Road looks bright
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Photo: Dimension Films
Scraping by to survive. On the lookout for those hunting you. A constant state of fear. Welcome to John Hillcoat's The Road, penned by Joe Penhall and adapted from No Country For Old Men author Cormac McCarthy. Walking through a burned America, a father and his son struggle to survive from starvation and malnutrition. It is cold enough to crack stones, and, when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination: the warmer south. But does anything or anyone await them there? They barely have the bare essentials: a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes on their back, a rusting shopping cart of scavenged food--and each other.
Some have already damned the film for taking the "global warming" approach, when in fact, neither in script nor novel is the cataclysmic "apocalypse" ever explained. It just is. It has happened. It is their new world that they must exist in. John Hillcoat's experience of making the environment its own character, and often, the characters' prison, is fleshed out in his earlier film, The Proposition. While the colors still look somewhat vibrant for a world torn apart and covered in ash, keep in mind, the shots from the trailer could still have not been color-corrected yet.
Viggo Mortensen returns to the silver screen with the strength and vigor stronger than his Aragorn. He is not on the screen to be nice, caring or a leader. He is there to keep his son fed and safe, by any means necessary. Mortensen's career has certainly followed that of a chameleon so expect more transformations in The Road. Kodi Smit-McPhee plays the son; scared yet curious. Charlize Theron (though almost absent in the novel, save for flashbacks) plays the mother, whose outlook seems darker than the terrain the father and son will be treading upon. Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall round out the cast.
Photo: Dimension Films
The Road is expected to be grim and unsettling, especially when dealing with cannibals and human survival, as with any post-apocalyptic tale. This will raise many questions: is the father strong enough to get his son and himself to the coast. And if not, does he have the strength to kill his own son and himself before the cannibals find them? Even in the bleak and dark future that director Hillcoat has created, there will always be a silver lining. The main characters are lighting the way; "carrying the torch;" the light to see a better day through the cold dark.
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