Film 2010 #4 - The Road

The Road (2009, dir. John Hilcoat)
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smitt-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce

The post-apocalyptic landscape of The Road does not feel all that distant. Set mainly in rural areas and rundown smalltowns, these are settings familiar to my own youth growing up in Springfield. There is an extreme nature to these places though, all animals and crops have died and now roving bands of modern barbarians troll for fellow humans to slaughter. Into this setting is dropped The Man (Mortensen) and The Boy (McPhee). The characters are never named, purposefully, and the story contains traces of allegory moreso than speculative fiction.

Though I have not read the novel this film was based on, I was familiar with McCarthy's work through Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men. I was elated when I heard John Hilcoat was signed to direct this picture. Hilcoat directed the 2005 independent Australian western, The Proposition and in that film I could see the themes and spirit of much of McCarthy's work. Both men are contemplative and almost mystical in their narratives, while juxtaposing that with sudden and brutal moments of violence. Hilcoat seemed one of the few directors best suited for speaking for McCarthy on the big screen.

The Road is by no means a perfect film, and in moments feels like a filmic self-flagellation, watching humanity suffer in such hopeless squalor. There are few moments of happiness, which is understandable when the world around our characters is literally crumbling and dimming out. The structure of the plot is episodic, with the Man and the Boy mostly encountering hostiles and the occasional old man (Duvall). Flashbacks are provided wherein we see how The Man and The Boy came to be on this odyssey to the East Coast and what happened to the Man's wife in the early days of the Apocalypse.

The most obvious parallels to be drawn between the two main characters are that of the Old Testament Jehovah and the New Testament Jesus. The Man is thoroughly convinced that all people they encounter possess base, survivalist instincts. Within the Boy though, he talks about a fire that burns inside him and is his responsibility to carry on. The Boy is the half of the duo willing to trust those they meet, and chance that they will find some sort of company in the wilds. And despite all of the film's bleakness and atmosphere of a shattered world, it does offer hope in the final moments, specifically in The Boy. You see that, unlike The Man, the Boy is able to trust and understands that without that capacity to risk in others life would truly be over.