REVIEW: Godless ‘Road’ Offers Bleak Worldview
by Darin MillerWith only a day to go until Thanksgiving, Hollywood’s latest tale of post-catastrophe life ensures that audiences are truly thankful for what they have this year.
“The Road” is the dark post-apocalyptic journey of an unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they travel from desolate, dangerous middle America toward the east coast. They hope to find remnants of civilized life there and to recreate what they lost in the mysterious unnamed cataclysm—probably a nuclear war—that left the world lifeless. Lifeless, that is, except for roving bands of cannibals and a few other pilgrims, like them, who search for some semblance of the past.
The film is directed by John Hillcoat and adapted by Joe Penhall from Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. While not a classically scary film, I still sat on the edge of my seat for the entire 119 minutes. “Bad guys” rarely appear, but the knowledge that at any point cannibals could find the protagonists is disconcerting, and by the end of the film I was emotionally drained from the tense world in which the man and the boy live.
Much like McCarthy’s other work adapted for the screen, “No Country for Old Men,” a sense of hopelessness pervades this film. Early on, a roving band forces Mortensen to use one of his last two bullets—bullets presumably being saved for a desperate murder-suicide when hope finally runs out. From there, the run-ins with cannibals and a few other travelers never end happily. At best the encounters are bleak. Even at the end of “The Road,” hope for the future is tempered by the chilling terrors of the past, and the knowledge that further horrors await.
Color contributes heavily to this hopelessness. There is hardly any color, only varying shades of gray. The first real color the audience sees is red blood. Aside from the blood, color in the film typically differentiates the warmth of life before the cataclysm and life on the road. Key moments of bliss are highlighted with color. When the man and the boy stumble upon a farm with a stocked cellar of canned goods, the colors of the cans of food are what stick out.
The film’s overriding message deals with paternal love. The man says that he sees God in his son. It is his son that sustains him, gives him hope, gives him a reason to persevere to the coast. His love forces him to be candid with his son, so that when the boy is alone he can still survive. He can still “carry the fire.” The film’s website notes that, “to the boy, that is a process of staying the course.”
Mortensen said that “any parent that cares about their kid has these feelings, these doubts, these fears, these concerns. … What’s going to happen when I’m gone?” The message of love, of the passing of the torch, between a father and son is important and well portrayed, and it is this message that prompts the filmmakers to argue that it ends positively.
But beneath this uplifting message is a much bleaker one, and it is this subtler message that left me feeling hopeless at the end, despite the pseudo-happy ending. The film paints a picture of a God who either doesn’t exist, or doesn’t care. The man does not believe in God, though early scenes show him in church with his wife. While he has reason to be bitter for what happened to his wife (she despairs and leaves him, presumably to die alone), the film fails to contrast him with anyone who has kept the faith despite hardships, which churches and individuals around the world prove is possible. This singular view of God as an unknowable, potentially non-existent being, removes any chance at real hope in this world. And while the man still has a god—his son—viewers do not have the same faith in him.
This bleak worldview keeps intimate scenes from feeling truly natural. The film prompts pity, not sorrow, for the boy as he arms himself with his father’s gun and prepares for the future. Even quality acting can’t overcome this message.
“The Road” brings the central question of human existence to the forefront of our minds, but fails to answer it. When you take away everything, what is left to live for? The man lives for his son, his god. It rings empty. Hope cannot be placed solely in the next generation. It must be placed in something greater. If it is, life’s road is not so lonely, or so long.
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wow- another exrecise in nihilism from Hollywood. What a shock…
Not high on our list of films to see, 'Barry Soetero's World' is depressing enough for any ten movies. But it is no surprise that there is no spiritually uplifting theme in anything McCarthy does.
Hvaing just seen George Pal's original 'War of the Worlds' on AMCHD, we were stuck by the reverent, even religious underpinnings to the film. Heck, they were even there in ol' atheist HG Well's written version, too.
Just one more reason NOT to go to the cinema…
What I got was the boy carried a "light" which had to be preserved, something he possessed was necessary for the human race to rediscover the Truth within. In Fact the Pope has spoken approvingly of the book, the light seems to be extinguished in the World, but" fear not I have conquered the World." That's about where we are now, I'm gonna run to this flick.
Hollywood is so damned in love with nihilism. It's fun, chic, elitist – best of all, it gives them that giddy euphoria of proving they're smarter than the audience. But nihilism is like masturbation – totally self-centered. It doesn't do a damned thing for me, which is why this film is not getting a dime of my money, even on Netflix. Hollywood – jerk off.
In a film class, some years ago, a professor said that dark films are popular in light times and vice versa – and cited the screwball comedies and Shirley Temple films of the Depression era, and the disaster/paranoia/conspiracy films of the late 70s, early 80s as an example. "The Road" may be a very good, very earnest, very well-acted film, and I have no desire at all to see it. Maybe if times were better.
It is interesting that the few trailers I have seen are fashioning an impression of a suspense, almost action-like drama, rather than the bleak tragedy that readers of the book know it to be.
If I go see it, I'll go to see Viggo act but that's about the only reason right now.
with obozo – there is a bleak outlook for America which makes it a bleak worldview
Without casting dispersion on how the movie seems to elevate paternal love, to portray faith as nothing more than a desire to see the next generation survive is unfortunate. This is not faith, nor really love, but mere evolutionary survival. A true understanding of immortality puts mortality into perspective.
Although the book painted a chilling landscape of a post-apocalyptic future I found it to be:
1) A waste of my money
2) A waste of my time
3) A WTF moment for Pulitzers… come on, really? What was "special" about THIS lousy book?
4) Something I would NEVER recommend for anyone to read
5) If the movie is only half of what the book was, don't bother
This book was the most depressing novel I have ever read. There is no "light" for the boy to carry forward and the story certainly wasn't about parental love. It was a horrible and hopeless story. If you want to read a book that will leave you depressed for weeks this is it. Anyone who paints this as a great story needs to get out of mom's basement, find a life and a real job. And if this was in any way Pulitzer material, maybe they are the same folks that gave Mr. Obama a Nobel.
I really think this is one of those situations where people are scared to admit something is bad, because they fear being called stupid. McCarthy has a reputation as a great writer – and sometimes he is, although he has a tendency to be overbearing, pretentious, and long-winded. So if you say you didn't like something he wrote people assume you are too dumb to get it.
But I'm not scared to say: No Country for Old Men was stupid. The entire concept of a criminal organization hiring a serial killer to retrieve a package is nonsensical. And the movie ended off-screen, for the love of …
The thought of being tortured and confined in a cage for not buying government insurance, means it's a bleak world already dude!
Nihilism? Quite the contrary. The boy "carrying the light" means that he carries morals, right and wrong. His father's only concern is that his son will be able to endure after he is gone and "carry the light." Viggo said as much at a Q & A.
The boy is actually the man's moral guide throughout the film. Constantly asking, is this right or wrong . . . are we still the good guys? etc. I won't spoil the ending but thats pretty much the closing sentiment.
good point- but it does seem that Hollywood is fixated with bleak defeatism- as if to convince the 'sheeple' to cave in and accept their doom. Hey- maybe that's it?
I don't think I'll see the film – maybe rent it. I was interested in this book, until I found reviews *praising* its nihilism. Honestly, is there anything edifying in such a book? But let's be honest: if the book is completely hopeless, maybe we should admit a possibility – that McCarthy was saying "ok, all you hopeless, nihilist types, you want a book about the natural outcome to your worldview? Here it is." Maybe he was being too clever by half (hey, happened to Chesterton and "The Man Who Was Thursday," when readers thought he *supported* the idea that good and evil came from the same place because they didn't read the subtitle, "A Nightmare").
Though, this view is probably about as valid as my "theory" that Roland Emmerich is actually a frustrated auteur who desperately wants to do an intimate period piece but, because of one blockbuster, has been forced to do ridiculous disaster films ever since. In order to get to his art film, he makes each successive film more outlandish and retarded than the previous one, hoping that, on one of them, the general public will finally say "are you kidding me?" and it will be a flop, allowing him to, at last, do the intense human drama that he has had burning in his heart for so many years.
Dunno, it seems to me to be the only *plausible* explanation for the nonsense he puts out. Maybe I just can't see that much "evil" in a human! Hehehehehe . . .
the sinner,
Patrick
The first movie of the holiday season is a post-apocalyptic psycho-drama? Boy, I hate this lousy economy.
I liked " No Country for Old Men", hey, evil happens and many times in situations that are improbable as you describe. Nothing in the movie alluded to the criminal organization hiring the serial killer as a a serial killer with those qualities being necessary for their job.
I think "The Road" is a simple message. What is the transcendant role of a protective father and his son in an unspeakable catastrophe? Holocaust movies have answered that many times. It's pretty simple and basic. It is also part of the human condition and why we respect writers that remind us of our vulnerabiltiy and strenghts.
As for "color," bleached-out, monochromatic movies with mere hints of hue are about as original as mint toothpaste. Been there, seen that. Yawn.
What would be original would be if they made a bleak film in breath-taking three-strip Technicolor.
It's becoming more and more apparent that this country will end up in the shape discribed in this aritcle. I don't want to think about it before then. It's very sad but all this talk about what's going to happen a hundred years from now makes no sense at all. To me, it's all just wishful thinking. Like the Leonard Cohen song says: Everybody knows that we're in trouble
Everybody knows what we been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvery
To the beach at Malibu
Everybody knows it's comin apart
Take on more look at the sacred heart
Before it blows
Everybody knows
+1 for your Emmerich theory.
Wow. Double digit joblessness. A huge number of people being thrown out of their homes. Inflation beginning to ramp up. The economy's in tatters and the fascists have just seized the last institution they didn't control , the US government. What a great time for a bummer depressing dystopian movie, cause there isn't really enough pain and suffering around us.
What ever happened to Busby Berkeley?
In the Bible, Job looses everything he loves. Job immediately falls on his knees and praises God. God immediately gives Job everything back. We learn that God is in control, and that justice will be done.
Some of us don't believe that God rewards his believers with abundance and justice. How would the story of Job go if God took everything from Job and let him live out the rest of his miserable life in isolated anguish?
We watch Schindler's List and we relate to Schindler or the Jews that he saved. We do not relate to the girl in the red dress. She is a plot device. But we learn at the end of the movie that there are 11,000 people who live, and 6,000,000 people who end up like the little girl in the red dress. And life is like that. So much pointless pain and suffering. And death. Death that does not lead to anything. Suffering that does not teach a lesson.
I challenge Kirk Cameron or anyone else to make a movie from the standpoint of a person who dies a pointless death. Tie the everyday reality to your proclamations of faith. Don't cherry pick out the 11,000 Schindler Jews. And don't just ignore the subject.
Well…. this circumstances depicted in this movie are the logical outcome of a few years of total democrat control of our nation
It's too bad that most people will not see a subjectively good movie when they forecast they won't like it, or get anything out of it. I know that most of the time people "just want to be entertained". But I can't tell you how many movies I've caught on cable that I've enjoyed immensely even when I'd purposefuly avoided the theatre or rentals.
A good movie should move some thing in the viewer's emotional realm. If one cries, or laughs, or thinks about something in the film in a thoughtful way, then the movie is a good one. It engages your thought process. When you are constantly wondering "how much longer", then I would say you have a bad movie.
I can dislike a particular film. But it can still be a good movie when it makes me think. I believe that The Road is going to be like that.
Oddly enough, they showed a rough cut of the film to McCarthy to get his feedback and his response was pretty straight forward: "How about a few more mentions of God?" I don't think they listened.
we agree- to an extent…
After all, Emmerich did 'The Patriot' with Mel Gibson; it is quite good- and quite the departure for him.
'Independence Day' for all it's kitsch was well written and directed. The first half of 'Stargate' was very good.
The other stuff- not so much…
if you read the Four Noble Truths- the Buddhist philosophical primer-
these issues are discussed with elegance. Life is about impermanence. And clinging. And suffering.
It is why we strive to escape the cosmic wheel or 'samsara'.
Makes a lot of sense…
Is it just me, or does this sound a bit like a post-apocalyptic Lone Wolf & Cub?
I'm unlikely to see this movie at the theater (no job, I'm depressed enough) but that would be a plus for me.
At the end of the book, the point is directly made about God and people who believe in Him. In fact, I thought this was the most important part of the story- the last page. Without giving anything away and having not seen the movie yet, does that mean they left out the final few paragraphs? And in the middle of such a horrible crisis that seems to have no end, isn't it natural for people to wonder if there is a God? How did the people in concentration camps feel? Or slaves? How do you keep your faith in Goodness and God-ness if no one is coming to save you? That was the driving message of the book for me. "Who is a torch bearer? How can you tell from the outside?
The Book of Job is all about facing a God who takes everything from a good and successful man. Job doesn't exactly praise God either. When he asks God "Why?" God appears to him in an overwhelming unknowable form, sort of like Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. The final happy ending is tacked onto the end within a couple of verses.
That's just stupid because morals come from God not some little boy or accident of evolution.
I believe you just nailed it. Sometimes a Pulitzer is given to really great writing. Often, it is not. Hopelessness and nihilism tend to be very appealing to the bigoted and mindless "intelligentsia."
Interesting reversal. If all hell broke loose, the East Coast is the LAST place I would head. I wouldn't stay here in CA either. Concentrations of population can only make things worse in TEOTWAWKI conditions.
My brief time in the Mid-West (18 months) taught me where the REAL people live.
I am not even sure most of the commenters have read any McCarthy.
Agree with your comments.
I've never read Cormack McCarthy because so many people I know say he is totally overrated. I guess that's why Hollywood loves him– he's just like their president.
Nick,
The rain does indeed fall on the just and the unjust.
"Some of us don't believe that God rewards his believers with abundance and justice.." I'd add…"otherwise we'd most certainly be believers."
It is impossible to make a movie about a pointless death. Since everyone is made in the image of God, all deaths have a point. Admittedly, some don't want to see the point.
The event that isn't really revealed in the movie but is catalist is in all likelihood the unintended consequences of
1. Cap and Trade
2. Government Health Care
and
3. Nancy Pelosie's 3/4/2012 appointment for a botox injection.
God is that spark — love. Human nature remains constant. God is very much present in this story, even if it isn't a pretty one.
The whole point of the story is that the father and son refuse to cave in and admit their doom, even in the most hopeless situation.
Evolution doesn't have accidents. If it works, it survives. Simple.
Have you seen The Grey Zone? I think it mostly fufils your 'pointless death' critera, and is a brilliant and painful film. It's probably one of the few Holocaust films about the people who actually died in the camps, and follows this plotline down to the brutal end. Don't be put off by the fact that it stars David Arquette. It's an amazing film. Here's a link to a great review:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...
(Personally, I think we are supposed to identify with the girl in the red coat, which is why it is all the more shocking when we later see her dead body).
I've read the book and I don't remember a single mention of God. For me that was the point; that they live in a literally Godless world. They are surrounded by nothing – no animals, no food, no warmth, no colour: it is like a living death. It is not a "failure" of the film not to reflect this – it is the whole point.
I was going to read some of his books, since he has become such a hot commodity. I read an interview where he explained that he only used simple declaritive sentences and stopped using quotation marks and commas because he didnt see any reason to fill up the page with "marks".
I decided not to waste my time reading the works of a simpelton. As Truman Capote once put it, "that's not writing, it's typing.
C'mon dude. It's called literature.
Actually, genetic mutations, which are accidents, are the basis of evolution. If the mutation has a beneficial effect on the organism, then it enters the population, because it survives.
"It's a horrible life" will be next.
That would be this movie:
http://www.clancymovie.com/
Hollywierd is just playing to the "Secular Progressives" that don't believe in a
higher Christian Being…..ie God…..but are silent on a higher Muslim being…..or any other
minority religion………..
The "Secular Progressives" believe that MAN is all knowlegeable and powerful as evidenced
by their belief that MAN causes "Global Warming"…….excuse me they call it CLIMATE CHANGE
now……and will lie and conspire about falsifying the data to justify their argument……..
VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLARS……..
I'LL NOT SUPPORT ANY MOVIE, BOOK, OR PERSON THAT IS ANTI-AMERICAN OR SUPPORTS THE
FALSE SCIENCE OF MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING.
"Hope … must be placed in something greater. If it is, life’s road is not so lonely, or so long".
Christian friends pity me for not believing.
I pity people who need a cosmic magician for life and death to have meaning.
I'm not saying the little boy invented morals.
The boy believes what he believes because those are the values his father instilled in him. It is the essence of traditionalism.
Nick Carter–I'm not Kirk Cameron, nor do I produce evangelistic documentaries. . .heck, I've never even recovered from any addiction. . .but I'll accept your challenge, nonetheless. The salient point you miss, as does this movie under review, is the hope of a true Christian is not in the present scheme of things but in what is to come. Therefore, even if the ratio of condemned Jew’s is a staggering 344:1—assumiong they were all righteous, a true Christian realizes those folks have in fact attained that hope and not the paltry and sad remnant who are left behind. Given that, a few corollaries follow for those unfortunate ones, viz., evil has the upper hand; life is not fair; bad things happen to righteous people; evil hates its own; in spite of what social and medical sciences advertizes, statistically, you’re personal Armageddon will arrive about the time you hit 75 years of age. So if anyone attempts a movie to show that hope, it must end somewhere not on the East Coast but in the New Jerusalem. . .perhaps in the room reserved especially for the star of that movie in our Father’s mansion.
I think writers and Hollywood in many cases associate darkness with depth and thus the seemingly endless stream of dark movies that have no message other than life is crap, evil is everywhere, we're f**ked…or variations of that message. No happy endings…ever!
Granted, in this movie the struggle of the father to care for his son and not give in to the evil around him is practically the only positive note but it is almost lost in a sea of ennui and despair.
In the book, the father and son are actually headed from the North toward the south to try to find sunshine and a warmer climate to survive in. Why the movie suggests the east coast as a destination is beyond me.
There's a large amount of hate and a large amount of nihilism right here in this comment thread.
Hemmingway also wrote in simple declarative sentences. Was he a simpleton? The act of adding quotation marks would seem to me to be more an act of "typing" than writing.
Like nearly everything the Coen brothers make, No Country For Old Men was driven by the characters in the story. To me it's about how truly wrong "good people" are when they think they understand what evil is. Liberals constantly show this same lack of understanding when confronted with death row inmates, dictators, and garden-variety sociopaths: they believe at their core that everyone is like them, and evil people are misunderstood, set up for failure by society, etc. No Country For Old Men contains several pitch-perfect scenes contrasting good, ordinary, country folk, with the criminals and killers that coexist with them in daily life. To me, it's a deeply Conservative film, and a powerful meditation on the thin black line that cuts through all the grey. Evil is real, and the Good among us can never confront it if we don't even recognize it.
I think sometimes people blur the line between what God causes and what He allows. Did He cause the Holocaust, 9-11, the drive-by murder of some little girl playing on a swingset? No. Did He allow it to happen? Yes. People have their agency, and to prevent somebody from exercising it, regardless of the outcome, would go against God's nature. He doesn't merely allow us to choose for ourselves when we choose to follow His commandments, because that isn't fair, and because God is perfect, He is perfectly fair. We can't learn and grow if we don't learn to think for ourselves. Do people sometimes make horrible, horrible choices? Of course they do, we all know that.
He doesn't take away our trials, and He doesn't always make life easy. He won't restore your murdered family to you in this lifetime. But He will give you peace and comfort if you ask for it, and He will make it right in the next life. That may not be enough for some people, but for His true believers, it is.
I knew someone would bring up Hemmingway. Hemmingway used simple declarative sentences, but he didn't "only" use them, except maybe in "The Old man and the Sea". He was first, an accomplished Newspaper writer. And the point that the use of proper grammar and sentence structure is merely typing seems off. Writing in English is an art, is McCarthy using primitivism to extend his art in the fashion of Hemmingway, or is he just lazy? Perhaps I'm jaded, but as per the state of art in the Age of Obama, I feel justified.
It's not about rewards or justice, although the western view of the atonement leans toward that since Anselm of Canterbury in the 12the century. The atonement is about healing and wholeness of broken souls, restoration of a relationship. Suffering isn't about punishment, but how a suffering God often reaches others. And death is inevitable. The only thing that overcomes death is a resurrection.
In the book, the man curses God; I wouldn't consider him atheistic. And at the end of the book, the boy takes up faith, unlike Cormic's other books.
What I find strange is how many liberals hold to enlightenment – man is getting better and smarter and can bring about utopia, and also nihilism. To me, nihilism, at least in this since, is better portrayal of the human condition.
I was trying to find out a way to put this, but you did it much better than I ever could have.
I don't think you've read the book. It's by far McCarthy's least nihilistic book and the ending, by McCarthy's standards, is downright hopeful.
it seems the film can be interpreted several ways…
FYI. For anyone who is actually interested in post-apocalyptic fiction the best of the genre is Earth Abides written by George R. Stewart in 1949. The scenario is the arrival of a "plague" that wipes out 90+ percent of the population. The book then traces the survival and recovery of a group of people who find each other to form a community. As an aside, why is it necessary for The Road to create cannibals when any three year old would realize there would be enough canned goods to last a radically reduced population for years? Anyway, the leader of the group sees as his mission to transmit the best of pre-apocalyptic civilization to the their descendants. The story traces the original members through their lives and shows the futility of expecting the following generation(s) to understand or accept the values that are no longer necessary for their survival. It is a very sad but at the same time hopeful future. Worth a read.
Like a moth to the flame, I kept coming back to finish this depressing book, as if obligated and with the hope that there would be something to redeem the awful journey of this father and son. And in the end we don't even find out what caused this awful catastrophe. It just "is", which i guess is the essence of nihilism.
I think the movie is a tad more nihilistic than the book was.
What´s that supposed to mean – movie characters cannot be moral guides for other movie characters? Dude, you will never find a movie you like.
Maybe he was being ironic?
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