The Road (2009 film)

The Road (2009 film)

I must begin these thoughts with an apology, and confess that I have not yet read Mr. Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel 'The Road', from which the film was adapted. I now see that this is an oversight which I direly need to amend. This film was an incredible production and story that must have been inspired by a phenomenal novel.

*Warning* Spoilers

Initial gush out of the way, I should add that this may not be a film for just anyone. The tale is dark, depressing, and paints a horrific portrait of the terrors that survivors of a post apocalyptic world may face. Personally, I love stories of this genre, and this film delivers a starkly raw scenario without a hint of the campiness that can so easily emerge in film productions of this nature.

The story is vague on the specifics of the event that brought about this apocalypse, but central to everything is that it has resulted in a world that is dying. There is no recovery. Life is ceasing to exist and humanity's remaining survivors are slowly starving to death as food sources and stockpiles dwindle and disappear forever.The result of this condition is that the most readily accessible food source becomes the survivors themselves. Yeah. Cannibalism. As the man says, it is the great fear.

In the film, no specific timeline or progression of conditions was detailed, but the bulk of the film takes place at perhaps ten or so years after the initial apocalyptic event. I think it is safe to say that most folks likely didn't take to eating each other right off the bat. However, at this point in the timeline, the most successful survivors seem those that have banded together to hunt down other survivors as prey.

As reprehensible as this is, it seems to be a rather plausible resulting phenomena in a post-apocalyptic world, and perhaps an outright certainty in a scenario where all plant and animal life is ceasing to exist. 'The Road' exquisitely illustrates the horror of this reality, and takes it even further by presenting it through the eyes of a parent who is desperately trying to protect his child.

As an adult, facing these horrors is almost incomprehensible in itself, however the task of protecting a child from that hell may actually be too much to truthfully imagine. This story very frankly addresses the question of just what a parent would do to protect their child. What wouldn't you do when you knew with absolute certainty that capture meant your son or daughter would literally be eaten by those hunting you, and perhaps subjected to unspeakable acts beforehand.

In this film we see a father who is desperately trying to teach his son how to survive, while maintaining some spark of humanity and goodness amidst all that was day-to-day reality. However we also see the father repeatedly holding a gun to his son's head and mentally preparing to commit the ultimate act to save his child from being taken alive. These scenes really convey the horror of this scenario and make for an incredibly moving story.

Despite my overall admiration and enjoyment of the film, the fan of post-apocalyptic stories in me did get a little annoyed with some of the details. For instance, it seemed that the father and son were doing a pretty piss-poor job of concealing themselves at night. The value of a warm fire is not lost on me, but it seemed like they weren't particularly concerned about how glaringly they were advertising their presence.

Secondly, why the hell were they always walking down the middle of the road and poking their noses into every other house they encountered. I suppose that the desperation of their situation may have made some of these risks unavoidable, but in a land of socially acceptable cannibalism, don't wander down the middle of a highway where you can be spotted and targeted from a mile away. Oh, and on that subject, how the hell was that old blind guy they encountered still alive? The vulnerability of that man's state seemed to make him a rather unlikely survivor to encounter.

Anyways, a few nit-picky survival details aside, 'The Road' was a superb story and film production. The imagery was absolutely fantastic, the performances were moving, and the horror of the scenario was clearly conveyed. I really enjoyed the film and am looking forward to picking up a copy of the novel. If you have an appreciation for dark tales of the future, you should check this film out.