The Road

***1/2

The End Less Travelled


          For decades now, cinema has been fascinated by humanity's fear of the end of the world.  Unfortunately, the nature of this fascination has had more to do with the subject's potential in bringing in box office success, than the emotional core found within this grave fear.  With such greedy exploitation, Hollywood has forever romanticized humanity's greatest fear: the end of all living things.  It has been a long time coming for a filmmaker to step outside the box of this clichéd genre, and finally create something real and humane with this bleak subject matter.  With The Road (adapted by Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name), director John Hillcoat has made one of the most credible post-apocalyptic movies in recent memory.

          Much of this credit is due to the outstanding lead performance of Viggo Mortensen, and the stark cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe.  The story takes place in post-apocalyptic times, but unlike many other Hollywood predecessors, this film gives no explanation for the exact cause of its apocalyptic environment.  Instead, The Road focuses on the relationship between a father (Mortensen) and his son (newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee), as they travel episodically from one desolate area to another, merely trying to survive another hour.  Mortensen gives an extraordinary Oscar-worthy performance, as he once again steps outside his heroic Lord of the Rings-like typecast, and strips his character down to the bare necessitates of life and basic human survival.

          Coupling Mortensen's gritty performance is the film's cinematography.  With no need for epic explosions or in-your-face special effects, Aguirresarobe's cinematography relies heavily on the natural elements of light and shadow.  His images are as bleak as the story itself, and reflect in perfect unison the film's discernment of that which truly matter in life.  The majority of our everyday lives are filled with superficial codings, with scarcely a day passing by when all of life's true necessities are recognized.  The Road juxtaposes images of skulls, empty cans of food and drink, naked and starved human beings, with those of abandoned ships, decrepit buildings, rusted cars, and so on.  Despite the bleakness of such imagery, these pictures help form the film’s wakeup call.

          However, as great as Mortensen is as the father, McPhee is equally successful at portraying a ‘cute’, whiny 12-year old boy.  Since The Road exhibits such an enormous scope of gloom, it is imperative for the story to involve at least a few moments of human innocence.  However, almost every time McPhee opens his mouth to speak, one begins to expect an upcoming cry of whining and complaining.  The frequency of such complaining inevitably becomes distracting from the film's more tactful handling of human anguish.

          Found within this episodic journey of father and son, is a back story of the mother's gradual departure from the family and its plight.  The mother is played by Charlize Theron, who gives an honest and empathic performance of a mother in conflict, as she tries to make the impossible choice of either surrendering herself over to the family's likely demise, or choosing survival through hope.  Her scenes have the potential for being heart-wrenchingly powerful, but they have such little screen time that whenever they do transpire, they end up falling flat emotionally.  For such a key character, in terms of shaping the father's driving ambitions for his son's survival, it is unfortunate that she is not given more screen time.

          The film's other major shortcoming is its climax.  After revealing such a gritty and credible portrait of the end of the world, the film's climatic scene between father and son seems relatively insulting to the intelligence and prudence of its audience.  Through falling back on the melodramatic dialogue of yesteryear's disaster flicks, director Hillcoat loses touch with his unique vision of an end less travelled.  When all is said and done, however, The Road will be able to hold its head high as at least one film that tried to be real, even while the majority of other such films took the easy route.