The Road
Director: John Hillcoat
Writers: Screenplay by Joe Penhall, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
Producers: Nick Wechsler, Steve Schwartz, Paula Mae Schwartz
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce
Viggo Mortensen’s performance in The Road is great because of all that the movie denies him. Withered and hoarse, he has such small spaces within which to suggest the human he used to be, covered as it is by what he has to be now. He says to his son: “I’ll shoot anyone who touches you; ‘cause it’s my job.” And under his absolute conviction he is able to show us his grief that life has become that simple, that the nearness of death has made his parental tunnel vision, in his mind, necessary. We believe he is not a ruthless man, but his love is now a ruthless love, and the way it has altered him provides the tension in this post-apocalyptic journey filmed from the pages of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
As movie apocalypses go this is one of the most thorough I have seen – even the innocent plants and animals were not spared. It’s a planet-wide cemetery; everything is decay and despair, and the only sound on the horizon is the sighing crash of another dead tree. Even their roots have given up. Director John Hillcoat used the primitive Australian Outback to mesmerizing effect in 2006’s The Proposition, and he realizes this bleak future just as capably.
We do not learn what happened, we only see the briefest glimpse of the night that the power went out, and Father (Mortensen) saw an orange glow on the horizon, and somehow knew the gravity of what was happening. There was a Mother (Charlize Theron) in this family – and for the first few years after they all huddled in the old house. But now it is just Father and Son, and they are working their way south through a ruined America; hoping to find warmth, water, or just hope itself.
Father remembers the world that was; but his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) was born after, and as they scavenge the ruins, you can see in his eyes his curiosity about the relics left behind, watch him still looking for room to be a child when there are such terrifying adult dangers everywhere. Not just any child actor can look alive in a somber mode, but Smit-McPhee succeeds in creating a sense of quiet dedication to Father; there is so much silent give-and-take between them, so much emotional negotiation. One of the movie’s best scenes involves the discovery of an old can of soda, and the unforced truths we get to watch.
It is a rare variation in tone. By intent the movie does not have much brightness to share. Far more prevalent are its horrors. Most of the humans alive are either cannibals or captive meals, and even the other wanderers are only as noble as their desperation allows them to be. Father carries an old gun that has only two bullets; not enough to fight it out with one of the roving gangs, but they are the closest thing left in this world to mercy. It makes it a dear choice for Father to pull that trigger, knowing that to shoot someone else is to give up the chance to shoot himself.
If you are wondering why you might subject yourself to this, you have the crux of the problem. We are dealing with the ebbing breath of hope, with the value Father has invested in what is, to him, the very last new life in the world, and about how he is trying to impress both survival skills and a moral code on his son while he can. He tells his Boy that they are “carrying the fire”, and the Boy tries his best to understand why that means there are things they will never do.
The movie is at its best here because it has found a truth that reverberates back into our world. If a flawed Father can make his son a better man than himself, then he has spent his life well by improving the world. That’s faith, and it’s moving. Parents who know that agony will feel it instantly in the way Father dotes on his son, and may even recall the reverse of the feeling, in those moments where Boy barely starts to understand what it all means.
But the movies have been in the game of ending civilization for a long time now – they do it on practically a monthly basis down at the multiplex. When the flavor of McCarthy’s language is not available to enrich the sights, and Mortensen’s virtuosity as a performer cannot alter the momentum of the story (or truly, the world) around him, the filmmakers’ skill at rendering their uber-blight in believable gray can have the opposite of its intended effect. I fear most will disconnect from The Road emotionally after seeing one too many examples of gruesome cruelty, one more respite stolen away. When the ending does come, quiet and neat, their hearts may have already closed to it. Hillcoat has made a film which is easy to admire but challenging to like. It does not leave the memory easily though, and it grows in reflection, and both those qualities can be ascribed to Mortensen’s performance. Watching him is seeing that there is at least one heart still beating.