The Road is another post-apocalyptic tales about life after God decides to smite most of us from the planet due to whatever would cause the Supreme Being to smite us at a particular time and place. The thing about The Road is that there is no build up to CGI explosions and the earth swallowing whatever it can get whole. This is purely the aftermath of such an event. There’s no real explanation about what happened. When you think about it with a worldwide cataclysm would there still be people offering explanations? There would only be a need for survival. Life is the most valuable commodity now.
What’s great about The Road is how ambiguous it is. The Man (Viggio Mortensen) and The Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) have one primary goal- to stay alive. Their secondary objective is to reach the ocean. With the fall of humanity this isn’t an easy objective as plundering and cannibalism reign supreme in this new land. The Man is also under the spell of the new world order, but is curtailed by the boy to show a little humanity by giving to others instead of taking and keeping all that he can get. It’s a road picture to no where, an atmosphere where death would be welcome because even hell would have to be better than this.
The Road is a bleak tale, shot with no color because there is no real color left in the world. There’s nothing for the eye to catch and appreciate because the eye is watching for someone who wants to take something. Director John Hillcoat delivers his first big motion picture in this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. The film drives like a father teaching his son how to survive, yet the boy teachers the father more than each of them will ever know. Mortensen and Smit-McPhee develop an on screen relationship that is one of love. The father loves his son and wants him to survive, but is willing to lose him if this hell overtakes him, while the boy loves his father by showing him that there is nothing to lose by being human. Both actors bring this to the screen and being the two main players, carry the picture through its dark and deathly world.
Simply titled The Road on has to wonder if this is a look at the death of the earth with the insects of humanity scurrying along trying to survive in a world that will soon be a cold dead rock. The other question is does The Road offer any kind of hope for those same insects scurrying around with their shopping carts and limited supply of shotgun shells. By the end of the film it will be for the viewer to decide. The apocalypse isn’t as simple and easy as it is in movies. It’s a revolving door on where one thing should end and another should start.
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