The Road

Now that’s more bloody well like it! Having sat through many of the films this week that will no doubt end up being read out by this year’s tuxedos on March 7th, along comes a genuinely brilliant film that is worthy of such utterances. From the man that originally brought you ‘No Country For Old Men’ comes ‘The Road’. From Cormac McCarthy’s novel and Jon Penhall’s respectful adaptation, John Hillcoat has produced a powerhouse of a film that, as far as I can see, sets the bar alongside ‘Moon’ as the pinnacle of acting performances so far this year.

Post apocalypse, Father and Son, or ‘Man’ and ‘Boy’ as they are known throughout the ordeal travel South, on the advice of his estranged and most likely late wife and the mother of his child, played superbly by Charlize Theron (please, more of this Charlize). There are no animals left, no commerce, no food. Only the cannibals and fuel hunters that must be avoided, save for ending up as someone’s meal.

The outlook is bleak and the continual hunt for food is uppermost throughout the film and the stark grey skies and fallout strewn ground only highlight the daily torment of a life for those survivors of the apocalypse that makes them, in silent safe moments of contemplation, perhaps wish that they had not survived after all. The most any normal person could expect would be eventual capture, possibly rape, certainly murder and then likely consumption at the hands of those that murdered you.

Cheery then.

Well not a barrel of laughs, certainly. This is not a fun watch, but then the majority of most compelling drama is not based around the long, drawn out extinction of the human race.

‘Man’ (Mortensen) is not long for this world either, suffering from what appears to be emphysema but for the time being has to survive if for no other reason than his very young son, who would almost certainly perish quickly in the dangerous environs that they find themselves forced to traverse over to reach their goal. What they expect to find there when they reach it is anybody’s guess, but I’m guessing there won’t be Big Macs.

We regularly visit the family, pre-apocalypse but still near the brink of Armageddon through flashback, which is the only place we find Charlize Theron, who does hopelessness as well as I have ever seen. She is seen mentally and physically exhausted, eventually walking off into the night, leaving her husband and son behind her, never to be seen again. Truly powerful stuff.