Sunday, February 14, 2010

The Road ***

Directed by John Hillcoat.
Based on Novel by Cormac Mccarthy.
Screenplay by Joe Penhall.
With Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pierce, Molly Parker.
Made by Dimension Films, 2009.
Seen in theater.

I've already gave the summary of the book back in the summer of 2009, which is pretty close to that of the movie.  The movie eclipses and speeds up some events, but stays pretty close to the book.  My biggest worry was that the movie would be Hollywoodized and focus on the marauding parties, action sequences and relationship between the father and the wife played by Charlize Theron.  I figured with a major star like Theron, they would have to give her a bigger part. In the book these sequences were only a small part the whole. Thankfully, the film treated these sequences with the same amount of narrative weight as the book more or less.  The film remains true to the original source material by being dark, grim and foreboding.

I was very excited by the fact that Nick Cave and Warren Ellis were doing the sound track to the film.  To my surprise, the soundtrack was very subtle.  Some light piano tinkling and some violin playing.  It was not something that stood out, but complimented the film well.

As I probably said in the book review, there is some hope in the film, represented the boy and his future. There is much discussion of good people and bad people, abnd the father is desperately trying to teach the boy about being a good person, but the stresses of their journey make it hard to generous to the few people they meet on the road.  The boy is his conscience.  So there is a dependency that the two share with each other.  On one hand you have the boy's purity of heart and on the other hand you have the fathers undying love and protectiveness for the boy.  They need each other.  When the boy goes on his own, one senses that the goodness will prevail, if the human race can survive, which is not a for sure thing.

And the performances are very good. I'm no expert on the elements of quality acting, but there are some excellent reputations on the screen, and I didn't find any of the acting to be false.