In Defense Of ‘The Road’

Reviews are comin’ in a plenty from Venice and Telluride on John Hillcoat’s “The Road,” his adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, and they’re not pretty.

The film is being hammered and we kind of expected as much. What does that mean? Were we aware of the narrative lapses the reviewers are suggesting? Variety’s Todd McCarthy is unequivocal in his position. “This ‘Road’ leads nowhere,” is his opening sentence. He also calls it “grim and bleak,” but isn’t that the exact point?

“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy doesn’t have much of a forward-moving plot or narrative. It’s a monochromatic father and son tale of trying to survive on the desolate open road in a despondent, ashy gray post-apocalyptic world full of cannibals, fear and hopelessness. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it other than the undying and all-encompassing love a father has for his boy. In that sense, “The Road,” nails the book in every sense quite beautifully. Yes, it’s depressing, yes it’s dark and yes it’s bleak as all get out. That’s the point.

Todd seems deathly disappointed that the film will likely have few commercial prospects with mainstream filmgoers, which is sadly true, and seems to ignore the fact that the film is all about atmosphere, mood and tone.

In Contention, at least seems to realize this when they say, “three quarters into [the film] it becomes clear that atmosphere may have been preferred over characterization,” and in a sense that’s very true. Some of the dialogue, and specifically an awkward voice-over at the beginning, doesn’t quite work, but to say the dialogue is flawed is overstating the case. Actually what we think would have worked even more is a near silent film, or at least the grim, dialogue-less first 20 minutes of “There Will Be Blood,” but alas the film doesn’t go there.

We’re not going to try to sit here and pick apart the reviews or make a line-by-line defense, but there’s qualities of “The Road” — the haunting, elegiac tones, the melancholy tear-stained faces, and gutwrenching unrelenting anxieties — that are seemingly not appreciated and very close with the original text in our minds. The novel was about tenor above everything else. It’s a very faithful adaptation. Perhaps too faithful, it’s not a linear presentation and there are few arcs. But that doesn’t make it a bad movie. It’s more of a washing-over-you experience like a slow-motion firestorm than it is an A-to-B-to-C journey. Yes, it’s more of an art movie. Did you see “The Proposition” or “The Assassination of Jesse James”? They are tremendous pictures and “The Road” falls much closer to these works than traditional movies, perhaps even having a much deeper and resonant emotional weight as well.

So don’t count it out just yet. The Hollywood Reporter is more in-line with our thinking and says, “[Hillcoat does an] admirable job of bringing Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen as an intact and haunting tale.” And yes, they note that the film will have a hard time having major commercial success.

“Shot through with a bleak intensity and pessimism that offers little hope for a better tomorrow, the film is more suitable to critical appreciation than to attracting huge audiences though topliners Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron will attract initial business.”

And this is totally true, but if you’re watching this film with eyes wide awake, you know you’re clearly a watching a picture that was not made for commercial audiences. There are a few small concessions — mostly that sub-par voice-over that vanishes rather quickly (thankfully) and the beginning is slightly clunky or a least takes a minute to find its rhythm, but when you see how brutal and harsh the picture really is you’ll begin to appreciate just how much The Weinstein Company and Dimension films let Hillcoat get away with. They took a gamble here and instead of sanitizing it, they let the filmmaker go as miserable and dark as the text demanded and — weird thing to say — they should be applauded or at least patted on the back for not butchering the film. TWC probably figured Oscar was their one hope, and while it remains to be seen whether it will generate much Academy heat — Viggo still has a shot (Anne Thompson seems to agree), Kodi Smit-McPhee, not so much — it’s an admirable and ballsy move especially considering how shaky their company has been this year.

What we would do to be a fly on the wall and hear some of the battles Hillcoat and Bob must have had though. We’re still with Esquire who saw it earlier this year and called its “unforgettable, unyielding” horrors and “hard to watch” qualities pluses and not negatives.