CINEMA: The Road, part 2

There have been many end-of-the-world films from the sublime (Miracle Mile, The Quiet Earth) to the ridiculous (2012, Armageddon).

So when I learnt that Cormac McCarthy’s dark and depressing book The Road was being turned into a film I was not immediately happy.

The book is a relentless emotional assault on the senses, as a father and his son struggle across a desolate and bleak America travelling to somewhere only the father knows. The source text has many cinematic moments, from forests set alight by lightning strikes to the hordes of men hunting the land for human meat, and in the hands of a good director could make for something spectacular to look at onscreen.

It’s a shame then that the version that has reached the screen is the Hollywood bastardisation of the story, although it features two astounding performances from Viggo Mortensen as the father and newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee as the boy.

It’s a film that should be understated rather than overwrought, as if it was truly the end of the world then we would not imagine huge sweeping orchestral music over tender moments or hear it used to squeeze every bit of pity and emotion out of an audience by manipulating them so obviously. The man to blame is the composer who has amazingly got the music so wrong that I wish I could just turn the sound down and simply enjoy the stunning visual feast that cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe has created.

It is he who has managed to bring the grey and bleak world of the book to limping life, showing us ruined burning cities, dirty roadside shops and a barren landscape where nature seems to have given up and trees seem to simply uproot themselves in desperation.

There is much to admire in this film from the brilliant central performances to the many small cameo roles that fill out the narrative. Robert Duvall turns up as a blind man who the father and son meet along the road, and shows that with even a small amount of screen time he can effectively develop a role.

Charlize Theron plays the father’s wife, seen only in flashbacks, but she rarely has a chance to show how good an actress she is as her time is so brief.

Ultimately this is a film that really goes nowhere and with a score that simply does not fit this will not reap the awards it so blatantly is crying out for. If they had simply left the music out or kept it simple then this could have easily already been one of the best films of 2010.