At the Movies: The Road

Our normally scheduled SG1 review has been pushed back to next Wednesday, as SABR Matt is on a weekend trip with friends. In its place, I will treat you, the readers, to the first half of a post-apocalyptic double feature.

Onward with a review of The Road!

Overall: 9.0

This is a fantastic - and deeply spiritual - film. Perhaps it is a little too subdued for those who are a more action-oriented, but thematically, it is definitely worth your while.

Plot Synopsis:

Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, The Road chronicles the tribulations of a father and his young son as they struggle to survive in the wake of an unspecified global cataclysm.

The world in which the Man and the Boy live is quite literally Hell. Those trees left standing have been stripped of their foliage, and the air is devoid of birdsong. Indeed, all of the animal life (save a few insects) has vanished. Most of the buildings once occupied by people have long since been emptied of their valuable contents, and abandoned and rusty vehicles litter the remains of the highways. Resources are so scarce that many men have turned to cannibalism to survive. Others - such as the Man's wife - have sought the release of suicide.

The Man, however, is determined to protect the Boy's virtue. At night, he reads to the Boy stories from old books and tells the Boy about the world Before - a world the Boy has never experienced. He assures the Boy that they will never eat other men because they are "carrying the fire." In the meantime, the Man dreams of his wife, who urged him to take their son south to the coast before walking out into the nuclear winter night to embrace her death.

As they make their way toward the coast, the Man and the Boy are occasionally able to enjoy a simple pleasure, such as the rainbow created by a raging waterfall, or a can of soda from a broken-down vending machine. At one point, they even come across a sort of fall-out shelter stocked with canned food and other essentials and are able to have their first real bath in ages. But more often, their lives are characterized by starvation, sickness, and the constant threat of being preyed upon by roving cannibalistic gangs. The Man carries a gun loaded with two shells and shows the Boy how to use it just in case - just in case it proves impossible to keep the faith. Early in the film, he uses one shell to kill a man who tries to abduct the Boy.

As the movie progresses, we see the Man grow more suspicious of others. When the Man and Boy meet another traveler on the road, it takes the urgings of the innocent Boy to convince the Man to share what little food they have with the traveler. And when they finally reach the coast and are subsequently robbed, the Man pursues the thief and forces him to strip naked as a sort of retribution - and it is once again the Boy who convinces the Man to show some mercy.

As time passes, the Man also grows sicker. He weakens. He starts to cough up blood. At last, on the coast, the Man dies, leaving the Boy alone. Fortunately, the Boy is found by another man - a man who has been following the Boy and his father all along - a man who has also been "carrying the fire" with his own family. Thus, the movie ends on a faint note of hope.

Writing: 8.5

This is a literary movie, not a popcorn-and-candy feature. As such, it may frustrate those viewers who prefer a faster pace and a less fuzzy plot. But if you are willing to devote the time and attention necessary to absorb the vignettes that, strung together, comprise the story of this film, you will get a lot out of it. As discussed further in the Message section below, The Road masterfully captures what it means to hold on to hope in a world where hope is seemingly gone - and though it may not seem so at first, every scene serves to amplify this theme.

Acting: 10.0

Performance-wise, there is not a single false note in this production. Viggo Mortensen (the Man) and Charlize Theron (who plays the wife in the flashback sequences) are excellent, of course, but I'm especially impressed with Kodi Smit-McPhee (the Boy). In one of the best performances I've seen from a child in recent memory, Smit-McPhee nails some truly tough material, perfectly capturing the combination of innocence and wisdom that defines his character. I hope we continue to see Smit-McPhee in future movies.

Production Values: 8.5

The design and direction of this film is very simple - it has none of the eye-catching stylization of, say, Avatar or Sherlock Holmes - but it is quite arresting all the same (plus, the story is better). In my notes, I wrote "St. Helens" with an exclamation point; this was my reaction to the opening shots of a lake clogged with fallen timber and a forest filled with leafless trees, which were strongly reminiscent of those pictures of St. Helens after the 1980 eruption. Said establishing shots really served to draw me into the story.

Message: 9.0

I've seen at least one conservative reviewer complain that this movie contains no spark of the divine - that it is bleak with no sense of hope or purpose. I disagree. I think that assessment betrays a lack of understanding of how God works - and misses some elements in the film that definitely reveal a faith that is alive, even if it is not particularly robust.

In this film, I see God's handiwork in many places. That the Man and Boy should find a fully stocked fall-out shelter just before they succumb to starvation is an astonishing stroke of good luck; so to is the fact that the Boy is found in the end by an intact family. Something is providing these two with at least some measure of protection. Their suffering is not totally ameliorated, no, but since when does that happen in the real world? Nay, since when should it? (As a Catholic Christian, of course, I believe that God has suffered too - and if He chose not to escape it, there must be some good reason, however mysterious, why it exists.)

I can also cite several moments that demonstrate that faith is not entirely absent. For example, the main characters repeatedly display a belief in the afterlife. When the Man and Boy discover the aforementioned fully-stocked fall-out shelter, they put their hands together and thank the nameless people in heaven for the food. And what is the "fire" the Man and Boy are carrying? Is it not a belief that we are made to do more than simply survive? Why bother to hang on to such an idea if you believe the world truly is devoid of all meaning and purpose? True, in one scene, a fellow traveler expresses some doubt regarding God's love, but this is only natural in such an extreme circumstance. Read the Book of Job. Read a Holocaust memoir. It wouldn't make sense, realistically, for the characters in this movie not to doubt; that they do is not necessarily an endorsement of atheism.

Bottom line, this is not a nihilistic movie - it is a deeply spiritual one. It is, in fact, an extended meditation on suffering and on what it means to behave ethically in a world where mortal danger - to both body and soul - awaits at every turn. It is also a stunning portrait of fatherhood. After the Man is forced to kill to protect the Boy, he fiercely tells his son that he would do anything - even kill - to protect him because "that's my job." It's a moment that really hits you where it counts.

And there is one last thing this movie accomplishes: it forces you to really appreciate what you have. I've seen one commentator remark that after viewing The Road, s/he went home and saw electricity, running water, and his/her full pantry in a whole new light. I couldn't have put it better myself.