Movie Review: The Road

Movie Review: The Road GPA 3.9

Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron

Screenplay: John Penhall
Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy

Director: John Hillcoat





I thought it was only the cockroaches and their ilk that would survive nuclear winter, but The Road (based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel) says there might be a few of us humans left after all. This is the story of two of them, a father and his son (about ten years old?), traipsing around the earth their species has tried to destroy. And these two are not alone.

It’s a miracle that a premise this grim kept me in the theater at all. In fact, I was the proverbial rivet.

First is the simple fact that there is a plot; things happen, in a sequence, for a reason. We’re tense about what will happen next, and I see no reason to be disappointed; whether bleak or cautiously optimistic, these scenes and episodes make sense, even as they keep us guessing with each test of character, each inconclusive comment on what we humans are.

Pictorially, the movie is not one dreary photograph after another; instead there’s remarkable variety within the sameness of the constant grey sky and November landscapes. Changes in subject, changes in light and angles, shifts from landscape to characters—including the humans other than the two at the center—plus a few brief flashbacks provide enough variety and surprise to keep the eye and psyche satisfied, though always sober and never complacent. Also, as much as I hesitate to say it, even without sunlight there is a kind of beauty in these bare trees and Appalachian hills covered with fallen leaves. Also, watch for the possibility of something important in the images of water; I'm trying to avoid words like symbolism and redemption, but my grip is loosening.

Like the landscape, the themes mix a little hope into the starkness. On the obvious and dominant downside, humanity has finally done the unthinkable: the holocaust has happened, a few years prior to our current story. But as a father and son make their way south to survive the approaching winter, their individual characters, their relationship, and one or two folks and scenes along the way illustrate that there was and is virtue and beauty among us, even as we face ourselves at our worst, in the wake of our most self-destructive disaster.

So why not a 4.0 for The Road? First, as much as I love Robert Duvall, so distinctive a voice has no place here, especially not coming as a surprise and in a feeble effort to disguise an iconic actor. Already I've grudgingly forced myself to accept Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron as a couple of poor and ordinary country folk. Why not drop Sir Laurence Olivier and Lawrence Welk into Appalachia while we’re at it?

Also, in last 15-20 minutes, I find some implausibility in the father’s choices, given weather and topography, about where to plop down and whether going for a swim might be a good idea. Finally, the appearance of four and half or five new characters at the end comes entirely too close to a deus ex machina for my tastes. The final scene is not impossible, but the fit is a little loose in a world where cannibalism is common.

I don’t know what scientists are saying about the likelihood of the McCarthy and Hillcoat vision of post-apocalyptic America and earth, but with the minor reservations voiced above, it feels realistic, including the possibility that writing us off as entirely evil and stupid is simplistic and premature. So, whether you’ve thought a lot or not at all about nuclear holocaust, this film ought to rub some hard edges off your conclusions, one way or the other. And that’s what art is for.

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