3: THE ROAD

John Hillcoat is not a particularly well known director. His previous film, The Proposition was one of the bleakest westerns ever made. Driven by searing violence and outstanding performances. It took a rather tired genre and elevated into something that fresh and different and rather intriguingly original.

The Road marks a more difficult task. Here he is adapting a beloved bestseller by one of the darkest novelists of all time. Cormac McCarthy, perhaps best known as the writer of No Country for Old Men (adapted to Oscar winning success by the Coen Brothers in 2007) received worldwide success with The Road. Its tale of a father and son travelling across the post apocalyptic wasteland of America became a housewives favourite when the book became part of Oprah’s book club. The novel is full despair, nihilism, cannibalism, violence, suicide and there is barely a glimmer of hope in the entirety of the story.

The film is an equally hard sell as it features none of the action that films like Mad Max or Book of Eli offer to help elevate the ideas the genre so often lavishes upon itself. Hillcoat, rather brilliantly, chooses to focus entirely on the relationship of the father and son and merely have the horror of decaying humanity at the back drop. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee might as well be related because their relationship never feels false. Never do any of their scenes feel like actors trying to emote. It is such a tragedy this film was entirely overlooked by the awards because both gave the sort of performances actors dream of doing. No matter how bleak their conversation the pair feel wholly real and truly in love with one another. The grim scenes of the father teaching his son how to kill himself or preparing to murder his son if they are found is horrifying but feel wholly real and a product of familial love. The film is virtually dependent on these two actors and rather interestingly if there had been more characters to fill up the screen, the film would never have felt so personal. The rare encounters with other characters often, rather strangely, drag the film down. Conversations turn from their relationship to ideas on morality and God. There is nothing wrong with this but the film is so entirely about how these two communicate with each other that it often slows the pace of an already slow film. Despite the pacing Hillcoat never lets the film drag which is essential given the dependence upon the actors.


The landscape is an equally brutal and realised one. Colour is never present in the film. It is a place where everything lacks life with trees burning in the distance or falling dead. The road lined with corpses, decapitations and decay. The hunt for food always essential and never located. Rarely has a film had the need for survival feel more urgent. To the eternal credit of Hillcoat, he manages to find a beauty in the film’s unforgiving terrain that seems impossible when described. The remains of civilisation take on a rather bleak poetic imagery in the film which is simply stunning to watch. On the rare occasions when Hillcoat’s camera takes in the wider countryside, instead of his performers, the visuals are jaw dropping, especially when the budget was rather low on this film. Nothing about the film feels false or manufactured. In this regard the film feels almost documentary like in its tone. As if the camera is not there to judge but merely to capture. The story never once judges the actions of its characters or implies anything.

The film is a masterpiece for feeling so wholly fresh and original. A film completely foreign and alien yet undeniably real. Its leads astonishing and its director marked for greatness for never schmaltzing the film up in any conceivable manner but merely showing us the horrors. If the final reel does not have you in tears, you simply are not human. Hillcoat should soon be a filmmaker everyone knows.