Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Road

Having read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, I was intrigued (though cautious) about how John Hillcoat was going to adapt the novel. Set in a post-apocalyptic America, The Road follows a father (Viggo Mortenson) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they trawl through ash-soaked fields and abandoned houses looking for some way out of their isolated existence. In McCarthy’s novel it’s not clear which era the story is set – with no reference to historical context, the book remains ambiguous, allowing the reader to muse over what’s happened and why devastation has hit. However, Hillcoat’s film is set in more familiar times. During one flashback scene, you can see a Mac Book sitting on a chest of draws – an iconic artifact of our age. In a later scene, father and son discover an underground bunker stocked with supplies, including bottles of Vitamin Water and cans of Dole fruit. These familiar brands are part of our current consciousness, placing the film around ten years from now (indicated by the son’s age). With this in mind, it’s hard not to align the The Road with a current trend of films that have environmental issues at their core. Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid is a case in point; set in the future, the film poses the question ‘What went wrong? Why did we not stop global warming before it was too late?’ Though lacking any direct reference to current politics, The Road taps into this zeitgeist, indirectly posing similar questions.


With money behind it, Hillcoat’s film looks seamlessly impressive. The greyed-hues of Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography creates a world of doom and hopelessness, and the CGI’d landscape of collapsed bridges and abandoned tankers gives a heartfelt sense of devastation. However, I felt this was really the film’s selling point. The boy’s performance grew increasingly irritating, as his moralising of the situation (“we’re the good guys. They’re the bad guys”) became almost farcical. As the pillar of innocence, he represented Hollywood’s answer to family values and innate goodness, however, for me, it diluted this sense of darkness and despair – something that’s key to the novel. Admittedly, the film offers what one would expect. There are thrilling moments, a strong narrative pace and star-performances. The circulating rumours of Oscar nominations are unsurprising and this should give you an idea of the film’s style and content. Overall, the film left me cold – there were too many cliches (particularly the closing scene, though faithful to the novel), but as Hollywood films go, you could do worse.

Helen

SP