It was a most unlikely Oprah book. An eventual winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road surely had the literary credentials, but lacked the predictable victimization themes favored by the talk show host. Even more improbably, McCarthy’s novel used elements of science fiction, namely the post-apocalyptic setting, to tell its stark tale. If not typical Oprah Book Club fare, it is in the popular tradition of near-future wasteland genre epics that now continues with John Hillcoat’s big-screen adaption of The Road, which has finally opened in New York.
While there was reportedly the proverbial flash of light, the world essentially ended with a whimper, not a bang. Nobody really knows what happened, and it hardly matters now. The Sun has been obscured by a permanent grey haze, killing most vegetation. Infrastructure has been decimated and food is increasingly scarce. Many survivors have resorted to cannibalism to survive. In this unforgiving environment, an unnamed man and his young son are traveling to the coast, in search of a better life.
Not willing to endure mere survival, the boy’s mother surrendered to the winter oblivion, leaving them behind. Alone in the world, the man will protect the boy at all costs, but he is clearly not well. They have precious little food remaining, no medicine, and only two bullets left, either for self-defense or for suicide. Still, the man tries to nourish hope in the boy, despite the constant danger represented by unsavory cannibal gangs roving the decimated landscape.
Unquestionably, the most compelling aspect of The Road is its oppressively grim post-apocalyptic milieu. Hillcoat and production designer Chris Kennedy create a fully realized world where the Sun does not shine, the birds never sing, and man is desperately inhumane to his fellow man. Wisely, screenwriter Joe Penhall keeps the cause of the global catastrophe obscure, infusing the film with an unsettling ambiguity that never taxes the audience’s suspension of disbelief with dubious junk science or politically loaded premises (like global warming, nuclear winter, etc).
The film’s bleak vision of the Earth’s near-future death rattle is undeniably powerful, lingering in the conscious well after viewing. However, the film’s on-screen action is pretty standard stuff. Ultimately, The Road offers a decent variation on the end-of-the-world morality play, but it not a dramatic triumph destined for Oscar glory. Its playing at the Landmark Sunshine.
Joe Bendel blogs on jazz and cultural issues at www.jbspins.blogspot .com and coordinated the Jazz Foundation of America's instrument-donation campaign for musicians displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
