I don't claim to be a huge Cormac McCarthy fan. I loved watching No Country For Old Men but I'll admit I haven't read any of his books. I plan to, but I guarantee I won't be thumbing through pages of The Road any time soon. The movie was more than enough to get the point across.It's an excellent film, best I've seen all year, but I wouldn't use words like "enjoyable" or "entertainment" to describe it. The Road is a profound and brutal experience that was fairly uncomfortable to sit through. I've only laid the "Feelbad Movie of the Summer" rating on a few movies in the past, this one is overqualified. If you've seen stuff like Dancer In The Dark or Nil By Mouth you have a very small idea of the feeling you're left with at the end of the film. The difference is that this isn't a family or relationship drama, this is epic-scale horror/tragedy with one very distinct difference from the vast majority "post apocalyptic" films ever made.... this could happen. And that scares the living shit out of me.
This isn't the exaggerated world of Mad Max or 12 Monkeys. The only comparison I can make is maybe 28 Days Later, but a million times worse because there are no mindless zombies that you can use as an excuse for all the horrible things humanity is doing to itself. The Road shows humanity at it's absolute worst, devolved into complete barbarism. Every single person is an enemy, even if they're not trying to kill you and/or eat you they're going to rob you of every possible scrap of food or clothing just to survive another day.
The film is extremely successful at building tension, filling you with a sense of dread that the most awful thing in the world is about to happen to the seemingly last two good people left on earth. Then it happens, and you know that in another 10 or fifteen minutes it is going to happen again and it will be worse. And it is. The Road is THE worst case scenario, the absolute worst possible future you could imagine because it could actually happen. We're one nuclear war or asteroid impact away from this kind of bleak and terrifying existence and that's the scary thing.
I can only imagine the book going to more detail, but I don't think I could go through that particular journey again. I imagine that's the point. Beyond the well deserved awards I'm sure it will rack up, I hope it's a film that makes people think about how good they really do have it and how things could be much worse. That much concentrated fear and negativity is tough to shake off, I really don't want to watch anything on TV or DVD for a while unless it's a brainless sitcom.
I'll be very interested to see what Mr. De La Bacca thinks since he's a huge fan. I can see how some of the characters don't get fleshed out like they probably are in the book and some of the important moments might get lost in the middle of all the horror and action, but this really is the most insightful film I've seen in years. Yes you should go see it, afterwards you can come back here and watch my pals Ren & Stimpy sing Happy Happy Joy Joy to make yourself feel better about life.
- Coop
The film didn't include the pregnant woman and two men who cooked their own baby right after birth which was a scene actually shot then later edited out of the film. If they had included it, that one scene may might have dominated the movie and perhaps given it an NC-17 rating.
ReplyDeleteIt also didn't include the female and catamite slaves some of the road gangs had which was in the book.
But the film was brutal enough!
Great film. Best picture of the year so far, IMO.
Great writeup BTW. Agree about the offworld expansion as well. I'll be the first guy to sign up for the moon colony.
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