‘The Road’ falls short of greatness

Editor’s note: Peter Lewis has agreed to use whatever it is you call his writing style to provide some measure of analysis to those folks who still go to a theater to see a movie. Enjoy.

review by Peter Lewis

I have yet to read Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “The Road.” Whether this handicaps me in any way as a reviewer, I cannot say. Since films should stand on their own, I personally don’t feel quite hindered. If anything, I feel my ignorance to the literature was a sort of freedom. I was not bound to any preconceptions.  Prefacing aside, the film was quite good.

For those that are unfamiliar, “The Road” is a probing and powerful tale of post-apocalyptic survival. A man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee)blindly strive towards the coast and warmer weather (for unexplained reasons the earth is continually getting colder).

Helmed by the Australian director, John Hillcoat, the starkness of the film grants it a certain undeniably desolate beauty. Throughout the film I found myself in awe of the cinematography. There seemed to be no wasted effort. Whether it was the paradoxically pulchritudinous landscapes or the nostalgic flashbacks to a previous time, each shot offered something meaningful to the audience.

As father and son make their way through the Appalachian landscape, their path towards the coast is fraught with peril. Time and again they encounter death, destruction and disease. Mired in filth, their clothes limply hanging on their shrinking frames, they press forward.

This unique bond between father and son shines through in stark contrast to the bleak reality that surrounds them. The man strives to find that eternal balance, seeking to both protect and educate his son so that he is properly prepared for the unique ravages of life once he has passed. In short, like most fathers, he attempts to pass on the torch of survival.

Though the world around them has fallen into a bedeviling incoherence of cannibalism and sanguinary that is naturally predicated on survival at all cost, the father stops short. Instead, he seems to have instilled in his son the value of human life, the difference between right and wrong. So as the father’s sense of impending mortality takes hold, his own world view begins to narrow. He becomes even more consumed with the survival of his son at any cost. Yet, it is that son, with his strident belief in humanity, that pulls his father back. It is this striking innocence, the ability to still see the world in terms of right and wrong in the face of rampant barbarism and inhumanities that is so poignant. Here, upon the death of hope, one can see the slope that leads to unnecessary cruelty.

Despite their position of prominence in the film, despite the power behind the bond of father and son, I was largely unable to connect with the lead characters. There was something disconnected about the portrayal that kept me at arms length. So, while I could conceptualize the power and depth of the relationship, I was not truly affected by it as much as I was the harrowing encounters or the profundity of their quest for survival. This inaccessibility stunts the film and is an irredeemable trait. As a result, we are left with an admirably powerful film that falls just shy of greatness.

• The Road is not yet playing in the Fort Smith/Van Buren areas. Link here for time and ticket info on area movies.

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