The Road
Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Road
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By Matthew Champion. |  |
Friday, 16, Oct 2009 01:10
Showing at the London Film Festival on October 16th (20:30, 20:45), October 17th (13:30) and October 19th (16:00)
General release on January 8th
By Lewis Bazley.
When the world ends, mankind will be pushed to its brink, with compassion abandoned and civilization a long forgotten concept in a barren, grey land. With suicide preferable to survival, and scavengers resorting to cannibalism, only by abandoning all notions of love for your fellow man will we endure. Yet, somehow, hope will remain. This is the devastating but essential message of John Hillcoat's stunning adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's bestselling novel The Road.
Set in a lifeless America after a mysterious globe-killing event, Viggo Mortensen and newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee star as the unnamed father and son battling to reach an elusive idea of salvation while the earth inches slowly but surely towards collapse. Though its release date has been shifted from a planned autumn 2008 opening to November 25th in the US and January 8th over here, this is not a case of a troubled production with poor early test screenings of much-needed reshoots. The Road is, thankfully, a masterful and hugely affecting film and if distributors Dimension Films were hoping for recognition next awards season, they'll be overwhelmingly rewarded.
Its tone is relentlessly gloomy, its action sparse - despite a trailer that seems to suggest a thriller - and its storyline is a simple tale of a long journey in a difficult land. But The Road will stay with you long after a screening, tears brimming as you mentally revisit the frighteningly possible future envisioned by McCarthy and brought to the screen by Hillcoat and award-winning screenwriter Joe Penhall. The horror of the landscape is enlivened by an unobtrusive score while the fact that scenery as devastated as that of The Road actually exists in contemporary America - areas of New Orleans hit by Hurricane Katrina were used for some scenes - is a shocking reminder of our fragility in the face of nature.
Yet The Road is in no way a heavy-handed attempt to warn modern man of the possible ramifications of climate change. While a brief cameo from Robert Duvall - as an old man who knew the cataclysm was coming - might remind viewers of the damage our actions could have on the planet, the film is at heart a tender love story, set in a landscape straight out of Revelations.
Mortensen astonishes, with a quiet, intense performance as a man willing to go to any lengths to protect his son and the hope of a second chance, while 13-year-old Smit-McPhee is the beating heart of the film, with a permanently haunted expression. Though her role is brief, Charlize Theron's turn is also crushing, with one scene in particular leaving the audience shaken and distraught.
In truth, it's difficult to convey the supreme power of The Road - only through viewing this extraordinary and deeply moving film can the offer of a can of Coke as an ultimate expression of love be truly appreciated. Without visiting this relentlessly gloomy world, you can't fully understand the bruised but unbowed affirmation that, where there is love, there is hope, even in a dying world.
It's unflinching, frequently brutal and upsetting, but also a monumental achievement in its combination of staggering misery and a stunningly powerful depiction of love. Simply unmissable.