I read and reviewed here at Epinions Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, an Oprah Book Club Selection that moved me deeply.  I waited with great anticipation for the novel’s film adaptation to come to the Big Screen.

We are all familiar with the cliché that novels made into movies are never quite as “good as the book”.  In the case of The Road, however, the filmmakers and actors did a wonderful job of taking the bleak horror of The Road’s  dead world and putting it on film.
The screenplay relies heavily on the novel, though there are some slight differences. 

The premise remains the same:  an unnamed event has taken place that has destroyed most life on Earth and erased civilization, turning human beings into hungry, desperate beings, many of whom survive at the expense of their fellow remaining human beings.  Aside from canned goods scavenged from the ruin, the flesh of humans is the only source of food.  The “good guys” – like the father and son heading south in hopes of finding a warmer climate and maybe some other people who have kept a sense of morality in tact – are trying to make survive while avoiding the bands of roaming cannibals who dominate the burning landscape. 

Many people who have not turned to cannibalism for self preservation find it easier to kill themselves rather than face the horror of constant hiding and scrounging for morsels of food, as is the case with the man’s wife, the boy’s mother.  Appearing in flashbacks, as the world rapidly descends further into hopelessness and she considers walking into the cold, dark, dead woods to die, the man tries to persuade her to say, promising her that he will do whatever it takes to protect her and the boy.  “What is that?” she asks.  It is clear that it is a promise he would not necessarily be able to keep.

Viggo Mortensen as “the man” and Kodi Smit-McPhee as “the boy” are wonderfully cast as the protagonists in this journey through hell.  Civilization’s thin veneer has been pulled back, and the boy’s spontaneous sense of right and wrong and compassion is what helps the man maintain his most basic sense of these things as well.  He is charged with protecting the boy, and the boy is charged with prodding him towards the tortuous virtue of compassion for the others they meet along the way.  When they are robbed of all their supplies, they confront the robber and the man forces him to surrender all of his belongings – down to his shoes and socks – leaving him for dead with nothing to keep him remotely warm.  The boy will not let his go, and they return to the spot where the robber was stripped, leaving there his clothes and a can of food.  When they meet an old man on a solo journey similar to their own, it is the boy who inspires the sacrifice of allowing him to have dinner with them from their diminishing supplies of food.

During an encounter with a cannibal who has stepped away from his gang, the cannibal, with pistol trained on his head, tries to convince the man that he and the boy will be welcome among the gang, fed and protected.  The man mentions the quick death he can ensure the cannibal with scientific precision regarding what the bullet will do to his head.  “You a doctor?” the cannibal asks.  “We could use someone like you, we have a man hurt up there.”

“I’m nothing,” the man replies.  This sums up what has become of everyone, reminiscent of Aunty Entity in the apocalyptic tale Beyond Thunderdome, who said, “One day cock of the walk; the next, a feather duster.”

Unlike Mad Max and countless other apocalyptic tales, there is very little if any hope in The Road.  There is no village of survivors rebuilding civilization like I Am Legend, no children beginning their own legends and culture like Mad Max.  Though there are signs of life carrying on -- a beetle flies to the sky, a dog barks somewhere in the distanc of a hiding spot --It is unclear what they hope to find when they reach the south. The world will not return to anything close to its former state.

The Road is a good though desperate tale that has a lot to say about what we are innately and what we become if conditions are right.  Our core human elements are exposed when we strip away everything we have from the rule of law to the luxuries of civilization, when we have to choose between death and struggle, and when we are “nothing” but moral animals hoping to survive.

Recommended: Yes

Movie Mood: None of the Above
Viewing Method: Studio Screening/Premiere
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing