The Road

I am a depraved lunatic when it comes to movies. I love watching them. I love talking about them. I even love hating them sometimes. So, I try to keep my eyes open to what is looming on the horizon, and this is a dire, foul year as far as I can see. All the little fanboys and girls, of course, are getting all goo-goo eyed over Wolverine, Star Trek, Terminator, etc, blah, blah, blah. I can't deny looking forward to Star Trek, and I will probably watch the others, but who really cares. Event movies like that are a dime a dozen these days. The movie studios don't want to release a movie any more unless they can guarantee something like $70 Million dollars on opening weekend, and good movies don't usually attract that kind of buzz, which brings us to my actual topic.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, is currently holding the number one spot on my favorite books of all time list. If you haven't read any of McCarthy's books (No Country For Old Men, Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness In the West, All the Pretty Horses, etc.) then there isn't much point in me trying to describe them to you. My description would only make it sound bad. I could tell you, for instance, that The Road is about a father and son fighting to survive as they make their way across the ruins of a post-apocalyptic America inhabited by few remaining survivors, most of which have turned to cannibalism. That description would evoke all sorts of horror and despair in your minds, but would fail to do justice to exactly how beautiful, and even heartwarming the book actually is. Somehow, in spite of it's bleekness, it managed to uplift my soul in all the right ways. I read it twice. Then again, some people find it incredibly depressing, so maybe I have it all wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.



Anyway, there has been a long-awaited movie adaptation in the works. Normally that would make me cringe in terror at the prospect of another fine novel being slaughtered for mass consumption. It wouldn't be hard for Hollywood to capture the awfulness of the story, but it would take a rare type of filmmaker to capture the strange beauty among the bleekness. But that is why I took hope when John Hillcoat was designated to direct the film. He made his debut with The Proposition, which is an Australian spaghetti western of sorts, and one of the very best westerns I have ever seen. It's quite disgusting and beautiful at the same time. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about that movie, and yet it makes my eyes more than a little bit moist in it's finer, more tender moments.



If anyone can make this movie it would be John Hillcoat. So I have faith in that man to do reasonable justice to the book. I also have faith in Viggo Mortensen. The film was supposed to come out last November, but alas, it was pushed back for unspecified reasons. Now it is being slated for an October 2009 release, but I don't know whether I dare hope for it to ever actually come out. Maybe it will just be the first straight-to-video to get an edition of the book with the special movie cover saying, "Now a major motion picture release" (now available wherever books are sold). Supposedly the Weinsteins walked out of a screening of it, although the chosen few who saw adavanced screenings have mostly cited it as a masterpiece. I don't believe internet hype anyway, one way or the other. Now they are saying that the Weinsteins have put it in October to open in the heat of award season, and they have been slowly leaking out various, small parcels of information, publicity stills, etc.

I have taken the liberty of collecting some of the best visual drippings here:


Viggo and Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Road.


Here is an oddly humorous photo of the actors who play the "men and women in the cellar". If you have read the book you know what I'm talking about. It was posted along with several other great pictures by Jeremy Ambler who plays one of the men in the cellar. You can see those photos on www.Jeremyambler.com/theroad


Jeremy Ambler himself, in make-up of course.


Some lovely concept art made for the film can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/14146112@N08/sets/72157604169280010/

Including some before & after location shots:








This one has been out for a while. Now I suspect that maybe the real reason for the delay is because they realized that they could still make the movie uglier, as seen in the next, newer version:



And that's all we have to tide us over.