Actors: Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron
Format: AC-3, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Region: Region 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number of discs: 1
Rated: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony
DVD Release Date: May 25, 2010
Run Time: 111 minutes
The stark, black and white, post-apocalyptic, world I pictured in my mind while reading Cormac McCarthy´s ´The Road´ is forever laid out in memory in the film by director, John Hillcoat. The real world after a series, of fires and disasters have destroyed the world we know, and ´The Road´ is as visible a film as any I have seen.
Many rumors of this film and how it could never live up to the hype of the novel have been swirling through the Internet. What we have here is a masterpiece of a film. It is a powerful vision of a world ten years after some sort of disaster took over. The scenes were shot in post Katrina, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and what they call the ´Abandoned Pennsylvania Highway´. Into this harrowing world marches a man, played by Viggo Mortensen and his son, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, trying to find their way to warmth. The coldness of the world is marked, and we can feel the chill. What they encounter is a horror filled world, one in which a group of cannibals keep a farm of humans with missing limbs in their basement. Gangs of marauders around every corner. We see their day to day existence, filthy as they march along, trying to scrape up food to keep alive. They find a house where a left over can of coke amazes the boy, he has never seen it before, and they gorge themselves with food before marching on once again. The stark reality of their life is measured against the gray world where everything is dying. And in this world, the man is teaching his son about goodness versus evil. What we come to see is that the love of this man for his son is the light that may keep this struggle alive. The absence of a God is evident. The pureness of the son may be the antidote.
Charlize Theron plays the mother in a small part, and she portrays the lack of hope that seems so evident throughout the film. Robert Duvall is the Old Man who conveys bits of wisdom. The son wants to help those who are crying for help, but his father tells him they must move on. They can only trust each other. This film is all about the father and his son. Viggo Mortensen is tremendous in this role, and he plays in every scene. The son is as he should be, watchful, hopeful, luminous at times.
The agony of the life that is left to the father and his son is conveyed with such realism. John Hillcoat has captured the feel and the look of the novel. It was difficult at times to keep watching, but then I had to watch. We all want the man and his son to succeed. They are our hope. "We´re the good guys, they´re the bad guys" is the message the father is conveying. But deep inside there is the hope that the boy and his father will find more.
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