The Road - 2009 @ London Film Festival

As far as adaptations go The Road, directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition), is about as faithful as you can get. But then Cormac McCarthy's book is not only very visual, it also affords any screenwriter very little need to reinterpret or even introduce new elements. In Viggo Mortensen you also have perhaps the only actor working today who can portray such a range of emotion, vulnerability and heart with just his eyes, or the wrinkling of his skin.

The Road is one of the finest films of the year. Everything from the cinematography to the score, to the costume and make up design to the performances and cameos from Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall and Guy Pierce are all note perfect. Hillcoat amazingly captures the bleak, apocalyptic future, and although the film offers a slightly more hopeful comclusion this is in no way an enjoyable film; instead it is one of the most profound and deeply moving explorations of one fathers love for his son, and the extreme lengths he will go to to ensure the future and safety of his ward.

The film can, however, become a bit one note at times with just Mortenson and Smit-McPhee on screen for such a long time. Scenes begin to feel a tad repeititive and so it is when the characters encounter other survivors that the film really scales the heights of brilliance. Duvall is superb, Theron is supportive, and her scenes help add to the mystery of of just what happened to cause this apocalypse, and even the scenes where our heroes encounter less than friendly foes on the road, from a stunningly brief cameo from Michael Kenneth Williams to the cannibals who trap victims in the basement.

Hillcoat, after the success of The Proposition, is perhaps best suited to this type of fatalistic, harsh reality and he along with cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe use real locations such as New Orleans to capture the desolution of America, and the tones and hues of the imagery help to carry you through the bleak future these characters inhabit.

Another minor criticism is Hillcoat's avoidance of some of the books darker moments. The previously mentioned scene in which we discover a cellar occupied by malnourished prisoners, the meal tickets for those that live upstairs, is neither as horrifying or as explicit as it could have been and as such some of the emotional wallop of the film is lost.

Ultimately though this is a resounding success and for those who love the book, will tick almost every box. For those that haven't though, this film is dark, bleak and for the most part unflinching in its fatalistic portrait of a post apocalyptic America. The only heart coming from the drive and determination Mortensen's father has to protect and save his son.