Movie Review: The Road

The Road (2009) 

Directed by John Hillcoat 

Written by Joe Penhall 

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit McPhee, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce 

Release Date November 25th, 2009 

Published November 24th, 2009 

I had to suffer through The Road on two separate occasions just to reach the end. Director John Hillcoat's bleak vision of the end of the world is so overwrought, ugly and cynical that the first time I had to walk out and get some air. The second time I suffered the whole of The Road and then needed a long shower to forget it. In some unspecified future the world simply begins to consume itself. Whether what happened was environmental, nuclear war, or some kind of biblical apocalypse we are not to know. What we do know is that inhabiting this world are The Man (Viggo Mortenson) and The Boy (Codi Smit McPhee).

Together they are making their way to the coast where rumors of a colony of some kind near the ocean give them some kind of hope for the future. More likely, however, is the idea that The Man has invented this idea to give them something to do so that The Boy won't lose hope. That is pretty well it for plot. The film is more or less a series of dank, gloomy scenes of sadness and degrading landscape. Things are so awful that even the trees seem to take a sentient stance and decide to simply topple to the ground. The journey along the road for The Man and The Boy is a slow, repetitive journey toward death.

Is The Road well realized? Yes, Director John Hillcoat can certainly suck the life out of landscape and star Viggo Mortenson is exceptional at becoming the physical embodiment of decay but don't ask either what the point of it all is. I tried imagining that the point of The Road was to have no point at all, that went nowhere and I was left really not caring. I have not read Cormac McCarthy's much praised novel on which the film is based but I am familiar enough with McCarthy and have read enough about the novel to know that the point in McCarthy's book is as much about his words as it about anything else. It seems The Road the novel was more about the way McCarthy wrote it than about any vision of the apocalypse.

What may have been at the heart of the movie The Road is a misunderstanding. Director Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall seem to have assumed that Cormac McCarthy was offering a vicious and unyielingly bitter judgement on humanity and offering a vision of the end of the world. The reality may be, again not having read the book, that McCarthy was working in prose and that this is where his vision and wordplay took him.

However the movie The Road came about, whether it is true to McCarthy's vision or not, it is far too depressing, vile and gloomy for me to recommend. Again, I respect the technical work of John Hillcoat who could suck the life out of even the most scenic locales and the work of Mr. Mortenson who immerses himself wonderfully in every role. I just cannot abide such a dark vision without some point. I don't want to live in a world where I cannot find meaning somewhere. There seems to be no meaning, point or purpose anywhere in the ugly cynicism of The Road.