Bryan's Movie Review -- The Road ***1/2

Some stories are made to be turned into movies. Some books are not. That's kind of the deal with The Road.

If you simply retell the story of Cormac McCarthy's novel on which this film is based, it seems ideal for the cinema: post-apocalyptic world, father and son avoiding cannibals and other bad sorts on their way to an uncertain destination, ample violence, adequate action, etc. The problem is that, if you actually read The Road, you find that its brilliance is not in what the story is about, but in how it is about it. I'm speaking, I suppose, of McCarthy's prose, which is so beautiful, despite being the very definition of restrained, that it would seem to make a faithful adaptation impossible. Sure, a talented filmmaker could recreate the events of the book, but, from the outset, he'd face an uphill climb in trying to capture its feeling. As a huge fan of the novel, I came into this movie certain that the book and the movie would be two completely separate experiences.

This would have been fine. I'm definitely not one who believes that the success or failure of a movie adaptation should rest on whether or not it "follows" the book. Both a movie and its source material, in my opinion, should be judged separately. For example, no one who isn't trying to fool themselves would argue the the Lord of the Rings movies were exactly like the books. Tolkien's stories were predominantly about characters singing songs, reciting poems, and recounting histories as they meandered about Middle Earth. The movies, on the other hand, were almost entirely about killing orcs. Yet, both are fantastic in their own spheres.

If there's a problem with movie version of The Road, it's that, for me, it was difficult to divorce it from the novel in the same way one can the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the end, I was profoundly moved by the movie, even to the point of tears. But, at this point, I'm unable to determine whether the movie was that good, or whether I liked it because I liked the book so much.

For those that don't know, The Road takes place in a dying world after an unnamed catastrophe has rendered it unlivable. The two main characters, simply identified as "the man" and "the boy," are a father and son traveling across the countryside trying to survive. Not only must they scavenge just to avoid starvation, but they also have to avoid contact with almost every person they come across because the majority mankind's remnants have reverted to cannibalism. There are a number of intense moments and scenes of poignant dialog, but the heart of the movie is the introspection of the man as he struggles both with the realization that he's sick and dying and the thought that, in order to save his son from a most gruesome and painful death, he may be forced to kill him.

Uplifting stuff, I know.

Both the book and the movie are ultimately about the state of man's shared humanity in a world devoid of hope. The character of the boy, so fragile and naive at times, is the last bright human spot in world that is, for all intents and purposes, already dead. For this reason, the man's only desire is to either preserve his life and to prevent others from tarnishing it forever. The former requires him to provide constant help and protection, the latter may, in the end, require him to kill the boy himself.

In the movie, the man is played by Viggo Mortensen in what is the finest performance by an actor I've seen this year. This is an emotionally-challenging role, requiring a display of both steely toughness and constant vulnerability. For the movie to work, the lead actor had to hit the ball out of the park. Mortensen does that and more. The boy is played by newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee, who is adequate to the task for most of the film and, in the final moments, also shows signs of brilliance. Other semi-big-name actors appear during scenes in the movie, including Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce, both of whom deliver big in roles that could have been throwaways.

Like I said, I couldn't separate the book and the movie in my head. I think that's due to the talent of director John Hillcoat, whose only other feature film is The Proposition, a fantastic, ultra-violent western set in the Australian outback. This connection is both good and bad for the movie in that it exacerbated some of the shortcomings of the narrative -- the movie, in order to work, had to gloss over some of the more introspective and personal aspects of the story. However, it also may have given some of the more emotional moments more impact -- sense-memory from the book, I suppose.

So, like I said, I need to see this movie again. In the end, it may end up being a four-star movie when considered on its own. Or, it could have just been crap that I liked only because I liked the book. But, after a single viewing: three and a half stars.