Arts & Culture
Review: “The Road”
THE POINTER CONTRIBUTER
“The Road,” set to open in theaters Nov. 25, is one of the most anticipated films of the season and is sure to shock audiences if it utilizes even the slightest bit of imagery that Cormac McCarthy so chillingly sets in his novel. The book does not spare its readers with its brutal images and unsentimental depiction of what our world could come to, and it is with great hope that the film holds this same value.
John Hillcoat, who also directed the visually sumptuous movie, “The Proposition,” is the director of “The Road.” The cast is made up of promising talent including Viggo Mortensen (“Lord of the Rings”), Charlize Theron (“The Burning Plain”), Kodi Smit-McPhee (“The Adventures of Charlotte and Henry”), Robert Duvall (“We Own the Night”)and Guy Pearce (“Bedtime Stories”). The previews make the film out to be a tidal wave of adventure and horror and we can only hope that the film lives up to the standards set in the book.
The story of “The Road” follows a nameless man (Viggo Mortensen) and boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they trudge through the corpse-strewn lands that were once pulsing with life. The two share the memory of the wife and mother (Charlize Theron) that chose a bullet in her head rather than the chance of rape, murder and cannibalization. It is this memory they struggle against as they follow the physical and metaphorical Road leading them away from their past and toward a vast land of nothing.
The boy and the man show a love for each other that most forget in this age of convenience. Under the ash sky, the man says to the boy, “No matter what. I will not send you into the darkness alone.” At its very core, this book challenges what we call love, and the relationships we share with each other as humans.
“The Road” does not just paint a picture of a dark world, but a world that is eclipsed in a smoke of screams. The man describes a scene he sees, saying, “Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. The screams of the murdered. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. What had they done?” The man and boy must walk through the chillingly desolate earth and find comfort in the empty houses that may carry in their vacant shells some sort of tool that will help them survive the next few days.
McCarthy inserts his views on the world and human existence through the man and his encounters with other fleeting characters in the book. Perhaps one of the most memorable characters that the father and son come upon is an old man (Robert Duvall) they see on the side of the road. The old man is the only one in the book who gives a full name and he later admits that it isn’t even his. The old man says to the boy and man, “People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasn’t ready for them. It didn’t even know they were there.” Like all the other characters, this man is seen, heard and left behind while the man and boy continue their trudge towards hope.
Readers may be weary when they first pick up the novel as none of the characters are named and the dialogue is written with little use of punctuation and the tiresome, “he said, she said” phrases. It is not difficult to follow but does take a bit of getting used to. McCarthy’s book also lack’s of chapters. He breaks up the story but without titles or numbers to show the change. This gives a feeling of continuity and makes it feel like you are on this extensive journey with the characters.
The language in this book is grippingly beautiful and full of honesty. Many times, writers cannot seem to capture the innocence in the way a child speaks and the words come out as fake and indulgent. McCarthy, however, writes the child’s voice as one of power and innocence. The child is always questioning the world but still holds on to maturity that one could imagine a child would pick up in a time of such travesty.
Babies roasted over open fires, chilling winds that bite at decaying bodies and a fight for survival in a world that is peeling away, Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road paints a gruesome picture of a post-apocalyptic world where a father and son struggle to remain human against the animalistic turn of their race. Cormac McCarthy hands his audience a bold gift that is wrapped in pictures of death and blossoms into a vision of hope. Hopefully the film adaptation of the novel holds the same raw and riveting qualities.
