John Hillcoat’s grueling, faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic novel of the same name is a bleak and authentic exercise in cinematic stamina that leaves you emotionally drained and adrift. It is set entirely within a destroyed landscape and if there is more than an element of Beckettian hopelessness, and helplessness, to the narrative then, the wavering and oft tested moral impulsion of the protagonists aside, we are left in no doubt as to the chilling depths to which man might stoop should he be faced with such a dogged quest for survival. That the cause of such destruction, and the subsequent inhumanity - a climate disaster that is alluded to in the film but not in the book - is of man’s own making has no bearing on how he, collectively, responds to his own grotesque hubris: in both cause and response mankind is a brutal and destructive beast amongst whom only flickering and ineffectual shafts of hope appear. And if these weak glimmers are intended to be life affirming, and we must assume that they are, then they shine so meekly among the austere deprivation and horror of a ravaged planet that they are rendered virtually undetectable.
The plot is a starkly simple, if troubling one. An unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), both deserted by their wife/mother (Charlize Theron), cross a decimated and desolate America in an ongoing fight to preserve their own humanity. Exhausted, cold and hungry, their journey, ceaselessly and perhaps pointlessly pushing their trolley of threadbare and limited possessions (the shadow of Beckett again) is both a physical and symbolic test that takes them through wretched landscapes, derelict, skeletal towns where monuments to man’s follies once stood, to the barren sea and deep into their own souls. Morality has been cast adrift in the aftermath of this cataclysmic event and the question of whether the man can maintain self control in the face of the depravities against which he is trying to protect his son – cannibalism being the starkest and darkest – looms large. As the journey evolves the pair encounter a succession of dangers and while the man becomes ever more resolute in his role as protector, and concurrently ever more resigned to their condition, then the boy begins to assume the role of a soulful, broader moral conscience, questioning their own behavior in this theatre of malevolence. Their relationship, while frequently tender and moving, is, one senses, heading in opposite directions, compelled by competing urges. It is a fascinating development.
Hillcoat was also at the helm of another fantastic, and woefully overlooked, exploration of morality, loyalty and betrayal, The Proposition, and here as there the landscape plays a central role. Where that film was scorch-dry and dripping red with the dustbowl wastelands of the Australian outback, then The Road, terminally grey and washed out is, too, in so many ways defined by the palpable realism of its nightmarish setting. This is surely a rendering of a decimated planet that we can relate to in its striking resemblance to the one we are already committed to, and it is all the more terrifying for that. It is real and heartbreakingly authentic (Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography is magnificent, there is no CGI and the film is shot on location in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and, most poignantly, in the suburbs of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans) and so the question that one must ask is, in the face of such wretchedness, when one is all alone and the only reason to live is the relentless fight to survive, then what exactly is there to survive for?
This is the existential question that, in the absence of any traditional narrative drive, propels the film forward and is one that translates well from book to film. And for that reason, for that intelligence, The Road, while desperately bleak and demanding, should be warmly praised. It is a beautifully realised film and among the growing cycle of apocalypse films that has emerged over the last decade it is, while not without fault, a standout work.
