It was the spring of 2008 when I heard word that Viggo Mortensen,
eccentric actor extraordinaire who breathed such regal life into Aragorn
in The Lord of the Rings, would be coming to Erie to film The Road,
director John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s
post-apocalyptic novel. As I’d just recently surprised myself by
admiring the gritty No Country For Old Men,
also based on a McCarthy book, this gave me three powerful reasons to
put the movie on my Must List long before it hit theaters. When I
learned that the cast would also include Robert Duvall, who’s been a favorite of mine since Phenomenon,
that sweetened the deal even further. And yet it would be a film set in
a devastated world, a landscape in which few could survive and fewer
could maintain the last vestiges of their humanity. I wanted to see it.
But could I handle it?
I wasn’t sure. So I read the book. And
bleak as it was, I found the novel profoundly moving, uplifting even. So
it was that I arrived at the movie theater with tickets in hand for the
opening night of The Road, anticipating a much quieter story of ruination than the adrenaline-soaked 2012.
In Hillcoat’s film, we see no exploding monuments, no panicked news
reports, no citizens fleeing in terror. While faded remnants of
advertisements turn up from time to time, no familiar landmarks appear.
Mostly, it’s just utter desolation. Charred trees and long-abandoned
cars languish under a permanently gray sky; a gloom to match Mordor
hangs heavy in the air. But like Frodo Baggins, the unnamed man
portrayed by Mortensen is glad to be with his son “here at the end of
all things.”
The boy, equally anonymous, is portrayed by Kodi
Smit-McPhee, a then-12-year-old Australian with a few films to his
credit, though none I’ve ever heard of. This is a film dominated by
silence; I would estimate that probably during half of the two-hour
runtime, no words are exchanged. When they are, it’s Mortensen who does
most of the talking, much of it only in voiceovers. Wisely, I think,
screenwriter Joe Penhall occasionally takes McCarthy’s sparsely poetic
narration and gives it to the man, turning it into his own thoughts. The
writing is so painfully poignant, I feel the film would have suffered
without at least some of those ruminations intact. It’s used sparingly
enough that it never feels intrusive and helps us to discern the gradual
passage of time in a setting in which clocks and calendars no longer
have meaning.
Mostly, the movie has three characters: the man,
the boy and the land. Because with Javier Aguirresarobe’s masterful
cinematography, all of the barrenness of which McCarthy writes seeps off
the page and onto the screen. This seemingly-endless stretch of
long-dead vegetation is their constant companion, and much of their hope
is wrapped up in the vague idea that somehow, somewhere it may change.
That if they travel far enough, they may find life instead of death in
every direction. An ever-present reminder of that faith can be found in
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s soft, evocative score.
Despite
the desolation, though, they encounter others, both on the road they
travel with a series of rickety carts and off in the fields and forests
where they forage for food. Then, too, there is the man’s memory of his
wife (Charlize Theron), revealed in terse flashbacks. Gradually, we
learn how they drifted apart in the aftermath of the ambiguous disaster,
he forever clinging to survival and she succumbing to despair.
Meanwhile, in sun-dappled dreams, we catch the faintest glimpses of
their idealized past amidst flowers in full bloom. She begs him to end
their misery with a few well-placed bullets, but it is also she who
tells the man to go south, giving him a sense of purpose, a quest to
fulfill. She who has no hope nonetheless provides the anchor on which
his efforts rest. The man endures because he must protect his son, a
task made slightly easier when he is able to imagine that a better life
could be possible.
Mortensen, so soft-spoken in real life, is
in his element here, barely speaking above a mumble in most of his
dialogue. His annunciation is more precise and his words a smidgen
louder in the voiceovers, but I had to strain to make out some of his
conversation. His delivery matches the quietude of the movie, but the
man’s bare emotion is thus accentuated all the more clearly. A fleeting
smile or a single tear carry great weight on the face of this grimy man
ravaged by years of scavenging and months on the move. And oh, the
tenderness apparent in his every gesture as he hugs the boy to him,
kisses his forehead or, in one of the movie’s sweetest moments, reads
him a story by campfire light! If Mortensen does not receive a Best
Actor nomination for this role, I shall seriously question the
competence of the Academy.
The man is a deeply decent person, a
pioneering type who I imagine at home on a ranch in Wyoming somewhere.
(Knowing Mortensen’s fondness for horsemanship, I love that the opening
scene shows the man nuzzling a horse.) He’s practical and
self-sufficient, a simple man who will do what he must in order to
survive but will not relinquish his moral code in the process. It’s
clear that he has instilled these values in his son, born into a world
gone mad, for the boy is compassion personified, and when the man is
tempted to let his survival instincts take him into savage territory, it
is this largely silent observer who keeps him in check.
Throughout the first half of the movie, Smit-McPhee barely speaks at
all, but when they face a series of critical ethical choices, the boy is
not afraid to voice his opinion. In Smit-McPhee’s wide eyes are the
sagacity of a little child who could lead the way into a new life, if
one would dare dream of such a thing. This boy who regards his father as
one “from another world,” full of delights of which he can only
fantasize, is determined to “carry the fire,” as his father has
instructed. A child so kind and contemplative might be in danger of
coming across as cloying, but he never does. His desperate desire to
extend generosity to a haggard fellow traveler (Duvall) and even a petty
thief (Michael K. Williams) is believable, as a way of making sense of
an incomprehensible world.
I read The Road on Father’s
Day, and rarely have I encountered a more compelling father-son
relationship. I saw the movie on the eve of Thanksgiving. It might seem
like an odd choice. But in truth, few movies have ever left me feeling
so profoundly grateful for my blessings, big and small. In the film, the
man and the boy take nothing for granted, carefully guarding their
meager possessions. And at one point, they offer thanks while sharing a
repast that may come from a can but is truly as appreciated as the most
magnificent turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
On the way
out of the theater, we bumped into a couple of my brother’s friends, who
laughingly noted that little video editing was needed to make Presque
Isle in April look post-apocalyptic. That may be so. But come the
summer, the flowers will bloom and the birds will chirp in the branches
overlooking the gently lapping waves, just as they do in the unseen
background as the credits roll. Some may watch The Road and see
only despair. But I see triumph of the human spirit, faith against all
odds and love of the deepest kind. I see a true contender for Best
Picture. And this Thanksgiving, I’m grateful that my little town could
be a part of it.
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