The Road
We laughed and scoffed when the line “Other families are doing it!” came around. The mother’s death made no sense whatsoever. The scene itself actually made sense, and I probably would have desired to die rather than run the high risk of being raped and killed by somebody else. Death is one thing, but at the hands of these people? And if I had the choice between killing my own child and seeing it being raped… in that perverse and extreme situation, it would a tough but definite decision. Nevertheless, walking out and killing yourself is certainly not an option for any reasonable person. It’s not like she was crazy, she was in her full capacities and decided to kill herself without killing her child. Wouldn’t any mother in this world stay alive to protect it? Either protect it while it’s alive or die with it, but dying without it? Impossible. Wouldn’t anybody know that two adults protecting a child is better than one adult with that job? The whole world of fiction has too many mothers that make no sense (I am looking at you, Downton Abbey season 4). Perhaps too many men or childless women are writing these scripts or something. Only GRR Martin seems to get it right, if you ask me.
With that said, the film itself is a slightly sentimental but still beautiful ode to humanity, and to the future, our children. The blatantly sappy love the father feels for his child almost makes you forget how bleak and depressing the film is. If you ask me, the film is actually very hopeful and even provides the possibility for the child to have a happy ending with a new family. Amongst all the terror the world could have become, there are still a handful humans who preserved the ‘goodness’ in the world that the film is always talking about. This goodness is like a small but bright light within the endless darkness, a little reminiscent of the infamous people who helped their Jewish friends in Nazi Germany.
Nevertheless, the film is positively creepy. I closely felt the fear which is omnipresent for the characters, and while lucky things are happening to them all the time, I sat there in front of my TV with my emotional shields up at 100% (if I may use a Star Trek/Big Bang Theory joke here). There is an inner automatism that keeps me up from breaking down in tears even though I really wanted to, which lets me retain a certain emotional distance to the film. In some cases (like “United Red Army”) I am completely unable to maintain that distance (until today just thinking of that film makes me shudder) but in “The Road” it worked really well. Emotionally I have an almost fond memory of the film due to the father-son couple’s tender love, whereas my head tells me that I was actually frightened whenever they were close to being caught by cannibals.
Overall, I am not sure whether “The Road” is too depressing because it wasn’t really like that for me. The film definitely is not an easy one to swallow, but thankfully it’s so much more than just depressing.
A short hail of bullets:
- I am amused by the fact that everybody seems to have seen the film or read the book before me. Maybe because the book is short? I need a good book to read next.
- The mother at the very end of the film is so overly motherly, I think the feminists in the world wouldn’t like that either.
- Is “The Proposition” actually any good?
Another one in the category “Read the book, not seen the movie”. A friend, who is a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy, was disappointed from the movie, because the whole atmosphere of the book couldn’t be transferred into visual imagery. In the end what you imagine that world to be is probably what makes you feel like being a part of it. If a director presents it to you, it becomes more distant maybe.
But people who like the book always hate the movie. XD With that said, I read the book “Stalker” is based on, and it’s nothing like the movie. Whereas the film is extremely atmospheric, the book is very chatty and wordy – it’s a book you think about rather than experience on an emotional level.
I think you might like the movie. Some of those flashbacks are a little too Hollywood-style, but overall the atmosphere of the film is quite effective and beautiful.
Omg you have blogged SO MUCH since the last time looked! Literally, 3 pages or something. Ill start by commenting on this one, simply because I just read Blood Meridian while I was in Taiwan.
Well, I love The Road. The book made me weep by the end of it, and I guess…placing this kind of tender relationship in a Hollywood Movie setting will cause me to be skeptical and guarded, simply as a knee-jerk reaction to any sort of sentimental-ness on-screen. I don’t know why it did not bother me in the book. Perhaps because of the way McCarthy writes – its about as sparse as prose can be, discarding even quotation marks (with the exception of landscape descriptions, which are disproportionately huge compared to anything else in his writing, hahaha).
The single most chilling scene in the book is the cannibal cellar. Of course. And the film does it pretty well I believe.
The Proposition is actually a much, much better movie than The Road. It isnt actually surprising to me why John Hillcoat would want to make a movie of something McCarthy wrote. Both are into extreme violence and, i guess, “grittiness” and western-like aesthetics.
But I would recommend you to read The Road, sure. Its so short.