Do you enjoy watching post-apocalyptic movies but think they are still too optimistic? do you ask yourself why hy can't someone make a post-apocalyptic film with 80% more darkness, 90% more dispair, and 150% more depressing stuff? Then THE ROAD, the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy might be for you. Otherwise it's about the most bleak thing you will see outside of the director's cut of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM.
The story takes place as some horrible event that has destroyed basically all humanity -- almost all people are dead or cannibals, trees are dying, no living thing is around. The Man's wife committed suicide after giving birth to the boy and so the Man is taking the Boy to the Pacific Ocean. The Man remembers a time before the apocalypse, back when his wife was alive, but the boy doesn't. Along the way they encounter other people along the road. The Boy wants to help them, but the Man is distrustful -- people steal, people kill, people are cannibals; you have to protect yourself from others. They walk through bleak landscapes, everything is dark or gray, they have their possessions stolen, they encounter cannibals, and the father gets shot in the leg. Also, the Man is dying, vomitting blood, and eventually dies.
Yikes.
I do want to compare this movie to The Book of Eli (reviewed earlier) -- another post-unexplained-apocalypse-journey-to-the-Pacific-for-some-reason movie -- but first I want to talk about The Road on it's own merits.
First, I'll say I haven't read the book. I'm just not a Cormac McCarthy fan. There seem to be people that think his sparce-but-pretty prose is a path to some great beauty and wisdom and depth or something. It actually kind of annoys me. It's like the adult version of "See Dick Run." Overall, I thought ALL THE PRETTY HORSE was okay, but way overrated. Still, I can see how his prose style would have captured the bleak yet fascinating landscape well. So maybe the book is the perfect "Let's take the book and throw it on screen" experience, but I'll just be judging it on how the movie works by itself.
So does it work?
Sort of. What I think the movie is supposed to be about is about how fathers want to protect their children and teach them to survive after they are gone. It is a beautiful sentiment, and there are a couple moments at the end as the Man is dying when some of that comes through, but for the most part that whole message is very muddled. What has he taught him? He seems to want to teach the son so the son can survive, but I'm not sure what he is trying to teach. Certainly nothing about finding food or growing food or getting fresh water, which I'd think would be pretty important. He spends most of the time warning him away from other people, but after the farther dies the boy meets a guy and after two minutes goes off with him and it seems to imply that it is a happy (or slightly hopeful) ending. So was the father wrong all that time? Should they have been more trusting of people? Was the Man supposed to realize he had been wrong, that in his fear he had been trying to strip away his son's humanity when in fact he should have been embracing it?
Again, that idea of how fathers want to teach their children, etc, is a powerful one and while it's there it feels muddled in the movie because I'm not sure what he's trying to teach his son, and so ultimately I'm not sure what it's saying about that relationship, about that emotion, other than saying that it is there and powerful thing. Which is true, but I didn't need 120 minutes of bleakness to know that. I would like to think father want more for their sons other than to leave them alone, in a world without trees or life, or sunlight or anything. A lot is made about suicide in the movie -- the wife commits suicide and the boy talks about joining his mom too -- but there really isn't anything that talks to why holding onto life is important and good. When you are surrounded by darkness and death and starvation, what are you holding onto? So is it about hope? But there really isn't much hope int he movie and there's no sense of what the Man is hoping for other then that his Son will be able to survive alone in this hellish landscape. If the Man had been looking for other people that would be able to care for his son it would make more sense, but there wasn't a sinple time in the movie where I thought he was trying to find other people to join them or to help him care for the boy.
Maybe that's a difference between the book and movie, that the book could get into the Man's mind a bit more, show his point of view a little clearer. In a movie, which almost always has more distance from the characters than a book, it just wasn't clear. Just like the cause and nature of the apocalypse which is never explained, at the end we understand the Man's desire to teach the boy so that he can survive after the man is gone, but what he is supposed to be teaching him or how it will give the boy a good life is unclear.
It's late, so just a quick comparison between THE ROAD and BOOK OF ELI. Now these are both post-apocalyptic movies where the apocalypse is never expalined and the protagonist is headed to the Pacific Ocean for some reason. First, Book of Eli is more of a fun kick-a** sort of film. It also comes off a lot more hokey, almost laughable at times, while The Road seems very ernest in its message and tries to keep everything very real so the message will be as powerful as possible. Ultimately, for me, Book of Eli succeeded more because the WHY of his journey is much clearer. We know he is carrying a book (later revealed to be the Bible) and that the antagonist wants it thinking it will help bring people to his town, thus making him more powerful. So the meat of the story -- act two, from 1/4 in to about 3/4 in -- is clear even if it doesn't really make sense. (Like why would no one remember the Bible if the apoc only happened thirty years ago?) But still, having two sides, each with an agenda makes the motivations of the character clear, which makes the conflict clear. We know what they WANT, what they HOPE for, and so we understand their actions. In The Road, I had no idea what he was hoping for. The idea of "teaching" his son is fine, but there didn't seem to be a lot of teaching, just telling him not to trust people (when in fact trusting people is what seems to save him at the end). There is no real point to going to the Pacific. There's no specific thing that will help the boy with the rest of his life. So it just felt like a lot of wandering and hopelessness.
See having a clear idea of what your characters want and having the audience understand that what they are trying to accomplish will help them achieve what they want is part of what gives structure to a story. It gives us a framework so that now we can see all their actions, their successes and failures and understand them in the context of what they are trying to accomplish and why. Without that, their actions have no real meaning. Instead of meaning, we get just stuff.
Oddly, I think The Road actually comes closer to accomplishing what it set out to do. In the end we understand the Man's desire to protect and teach his son, and he is rewarded (post-mortem) by his son finding a new family of decent people. So the ending of The Road finds its meaning, even if it wasn't clear through most of the journey. In Book of Eli, however, while the journey is clearer I don't really get anything from the ending. He eventually does deliver the Bible, but so what? The worl dis going to be okay because we have the Bible now? Didn't people blame the Bible for the start of the apocalypse-that-is-not-explained-so-we-don't-really-know-what-it-was? So that means the ending is...good? Bad? No idea. But at least the journey was entertaining.
I hope that made sense and I didn't ramble with too many typos. Time for bed.
--Paul
This movie has made history recently as one lowest grossing movie in history. Apparently, the distribution company decided to release it on dvd and pay-per-view at the same time as in the theaters and it made around $100/theater. Anyway, I thought I'd give it a watch to see if it was that bad or if it was just that the ad budget was that close to zero. So how was it? It was okay. Not great, but not the worst either.
