The end of the road

Last Saturday night I went to a very very late show of 'The road', in a state of some anticipation. I read the book last summer in practically a single sitting, in fact sitting on a train when I should have been doing work, but somehow mesmerised by the spare stripped-back prose, economical and minimalist, but with occasional flashes of poetry, and occasional pretension.

When I heard about the film, all signs were good:

- Viggo Mortensen, a hell of an actor who redfined sensitive toughness you could absolutely believe in as Aragorn, enough to forget crap performances like 'Daylight' (well clearly not completely forgotten)

- director John Hillcoat, whose 'The proposition' was so raw and gritty you needed a shower after watching it, just like 'The road' should be

- music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, enough said


Bringing such baggage into the cinema, motly empty so with plenty of space to spread it around, it did not disappoint, and almost completely lived up to expectations and the book, to the extent that I could not imagine a more convincing bringing of McCarthy's blasted world to failing life. The actors were almost perfect, and some thoughts and slight issues are as follows:

1. The trailer is bizarre, or at least the first few seconds, which make it look like a Roland Emmerich film. The official trailer on Youtube is blocked, but I found a version with crap intro below. The first scenes are not even in the film, and come perilously close to explaining what must must muct not be explained. I heard an interview with Hillcoat on Mark Kermode's podcast where he said the studio did this and can only think - is that not illegal, immoral or just plain ill? Luckily I only saw the trailer after the film, but it could lure the unsuspecting into a false sense of what the movie is about.



2. The ending remains as problematic for me in the film as it was in the book. Obviously, the tale cannot have a conventional happy ending, and to end with a double death would be nihilistic in the extreme, as arguably would be the sight of the boy abandoned and alone. So, this is perhaps the only logical twist that could leave any residual hope (even if 5 - and a dog - are not all that much safer from the bands seen marauding than 2, and it is not like they had a map to Disneyland with them). However, it is still a little 'convenient', particularly in the film where time and geography are slightly compressed compared to the book. In another minor but significant change, the dog is not mentioned in the book, and a new referce to having followed them has been added, which lead to the question (due to the clarity of the incredible soundscape carrying barking sounds on several occasions) of how long they had been following, what they had seen and missed, and why they waited so long.

3. I have a niggling doubt about the boy, both in film and book. Somehow, I feel that he does not seem like he has not known anything else, and was born after 'the mysterious yet cataclysmic event'; I cannot help but think he too much of a sense of longing and missing which suggest knowledge of things being different, and that he would be somehow tougher and colder if all he had experienced was this awful world.

4. What does Viggo know about apocalyptic dental hygiene that Guy Pearce does not?

On a final note, I read where they found the boy in Australia and he is perfect, notwithstanding my comment above. The most amazing thing to me is how much he resembles the distinctive features of Chrlize Theron, emphasised when they wear the same hat - it cannot be accidental in the casting, and makes sure the father is carrying his family right through that long long road.

Anyway, enough nit-picking - a great book demanded a great movie which could not flinch from the source's grim and appalling vista, and on all fronts this was a success.