Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings
Movie Monday - The Road
In one word: Wow!
I came to this movie with much trepidation and no background. First, about the no background: I knew it was based on a Pulitzer Prize, Oprah-pick novel which I had never read. So I knew it was an iconic work (possibly more due to the buzz created by Oprah than the PP) and I had to accept that some givens in the movie would be very familiar to a large audience, but not to me. Second, the trepidation: the movie had such a lousy pre-release period. It’s opening was postponed which is the code for “we have problems.” Was I going to be watching a flop? Did the interplay between the father and son (the most crucial dynamic of the film) really bomb? I was not expecting much when I finally sat down to see The Road on Showcase.
I was so wrong. I was stunned by the look and feel of the movie. This is a post-apocalyptic world that just keeps on giving. Except for some brief flashbacks (shot effectively in garish, artificial brilliant color and which flesh out characters and story) the movie’s setting stays on point throughout: bleak, cold, ugly, sterile. This is the end of the world ala T.S. Eliot: not with a bang but with a whimper.
All the actors contribute to the tone of the movie; Theron, Duvall, Pearce, but it is Mortensen as the father who, for me, totally changed from actor to character. That is, I no longer saw an actor playing a role, but an actor being the role with no distractions. Not a difficult stretch in “over-the-top” roles but pretty remarkable with the subtlety needed for this role. (Especially since probably no one of movie age in the world can look at Mortensen today and not think: Aragon.)
There was always going to be a problem with the son’s role and though Smit-McPhee plays it perfectly, neither his parents or Child Protective Services were going to allow him to starve himself into the “bag of bones” looks needed for both father and child. But he more than makes up for his lack of skinniness by his interaction with the father. The scene where his father shows him how to commit suicide, the scene where he awakens his father after he discovers his pocket trinkets on the table and says quietly: Don’t touch my stuff, and the final scene with his father on the beach are just three to watch.
Without having the book as reference, here’s what I got from the movie:
1. When the wife was at least 5 months pregnant (How do I know, you ask. She was visibly pregnant) a worldwide natural disaster happens. And by the time she is ready to give birth (4 months later), this disaster has become so terrible that the world is gray and she wants to have herself die with the baby inside. We don’t have to do this, she tells her husband. Oh, I think we do, he replies, and he helps her through a home delivery in a dark, cold-looking house.
2. Fast-forward about 10 years and the child is drawing on the walls in a candle-lit, cold house and the mother is asking the father to consider suicide as other families are doing. We will never learn what the natural holocaust was except that within a year of the first scene, society collapsed. The father refuses suicide and begs the wife to remain with them. However, she insists on walking into the freezing night to her death clad only in a tee and slacks. At this point, the father and the son are alone.
I found the scene when the mother leaves interesting. Normally, men comfort women but in their final hug, Mortensen puts his head on Theron’s shoulder. She is comforting him. She then tells him: Go south. Keep him warm. We won’t last another winter here. He has the hope; but she has the strength to face the bleak reality. It’s this subtle touches which define this movie.
3. The trip the father and son take to the ocean and warmth is spent for the most part walking on The Road. The father, whose character never changes, is constantly on the alert to protect his son. To him, all people they meet are the enemy and he is not paranoiac in his belief; there are many cannibals on the road. I have seen the movie four times but I still can’t watch all of the scene in the big house where they see the piles of shoes and discover the horrors in the basement and the bathroom. I know the father will not shoot the son in this scene (too early in the movie) but his and the boy’s fear rings so true as they await the woman opening the door, at which point the father must act.
4. People have said that the boy represents Christ and there is dialogue which leads to that conclusion. I know the movie is metaphor but I see it all on a much more basic level: what will humans do at the slow ending of our world? I know that the father represents hope; hope that there will be a better day. He takes all the burdens of the world on his shoulders to protect his son from the horrors but never understands (until close to the end) that the son “gets it.” The boy understands the horrors; he also carries the burden. He has understood the lessons. (Taking about lessons, it's obvious that the boy [aged 10?] can barely read as he struggles to read "Pears" on a can.)
5. We learn the father is dying early on and once he coughs up blood, you know the end is near. But I get no comfort with the deux-ex-machina ending as a nuclear family (father, mother, brother, sister, and dog) appear to care for the boy after the father dies. (We’ve been following you. We were worried about you. The mother tells the boy.) If the father’s voice-over has been correct throughout the movie and there is no sun, all the animals are dead [except for Fido, that is] and all the trees will finally fall from lack of nourishment, then the boy is just going to continue the journey to a slow death.
Huh? You say. What a bummer! But it isn’t. I’ve tried to analyze why I have my reaction to this film since I have no dog in this fight not having read the book. I think it’s because I see a possible future for me and mine and you and yours in this movie if as many scientists believe that without "a fix" the tipping-point for global warming will occur in two years. (Unfortunately for the whole world, too, too many Americans think: OK, that was the tipping point. Tip it back.)
Now, I made my husband, as my science-guru, watch the beginning of this movie as I explained the time line: 5 months pregnant - holocaust event occurs; 4 months later - the mother has lost all hope. My question was: Is such a quick moving natural disaster possible? His answer: Not unless a meteor hit the earth. I asked him because I did want to know if I was watching metaphor or reality. In the end, I think I’m (we’re) watching both.
George Clooney in Up In The Air gives motivational lectures titled “What’s In Your Backpack?" His thesis being that we carry too much emotional baggage. Watching The Road as the father and son push that shopping cart with all their worldly goods I’m asking myself: At the slow end of the world, what must I carry with me to survive?
Some final notes: It looks like The Road got no Oscar nominations. Not surprising for Hollywood but always disappointing. Unfortunately, the worldwide economic crash occurred at the time of this movie and we, Americans, do not like downer movies even in good times. Then The Weinstein Company experienced a financial crisis and must have sold their rights to the Dimension Films and the 2929 Company.
Bad timing, bad luck, but a great movie. Watch it.
I came to this movie with much trepidation and no background. First, about the no background: I knew it was based on a Pulitzer Prize, Oprah-pick novel which I had never read. So I knew it was an iconic work (possibly more due to the buzz created by Oprah than the PP) and I had to accept that some givens in the movie would be very familiar to a large audience, but not to me. Second, the trepidation: the movie had such a lousy pre-release period. It’s opening was postponed which is the code for “we have problems.” Was I going to be watching a flop? Did the interplay between the father and son (the most crucial dynamic of the film) really bomb? I was not expecting much when I finally sat down to see The Road on Showcase.
I was so wrong. I was stunned by the look and feel of the movie. This is a post-apocalyptic world that just keeps on giving. Except for some brief flashbacks (shot effectively in garish, artificial brilliant color and which flesh out characters and story) the movie’s setting stays on point throughout: bleak, cold, ugly, sterile. This is the end of the world ala T.S. Eliot: not with a bang but with a whimper.
All the actors contribute to the tone of the movie; Theron, Duvall, Pearce, but it is Mortensen as the father who, for me, totally changed from actor to character. That is, I no longer saw an actor playing a role, but an actor being the role with no distractions. Not a difficult stretch in “over-the-top” roles but pretty remarkable with the subtlety needed for this role. (Especially since probably no one of movie age in the world can look at Mortensen today and not think: Aragon.)
There was always going to be a problem with the son’s role and though Smit-McPhee plays it perfectly, neither his parents or Child Protective Services were going to allow him to starve himself into the “bag of bones” looks needed for both father and child. But he more than makes up for his lack of skinniness by his interaction with the father. The scene where his father shows him how to commit suicide, the scene where he awakens his father after he discovers his pocket trinkets on the table and says quietly: Don’t touch my stuff, and the final scene with his father on the beach are just three to watch.
Without having the book as reference, here’s what I got from the movie:
1. When the wife was at least 5 months pregnant (How do I know, you ask. She was visibly pregnant) a worldwide natural disaster happens. And by the time she is ready to give birth (4 months later), this disaster has become so terrible that the world is gray and she wants to have herself die with the baby inside. We don’t have to do this, she tells her husband. Oh, I think we do, he replies, and he helps her through a home delivery in a dark, cold-looking house.
2. Fast-forward about 10 years and the child is drawing on the walls in a candle-lit, cold house and the mother is asking the father to consider suicide as other families are doing. We will never learn what the natural holocaust was except that within a year of the first scene, society collapsed. The father refuses suicide and begs the wife to remain with them. However, she insists on walking into the freezing night to her death clad only in a tee and slacks. At this point, the father and the son are alone.
I found the scene when the mother leaves interesting. Normally, men comfort women but in their final hug, Mortensen puts his head on Theron’s shoulder. She is comforting him. She then tells him: Go south. Keep him warm. We won’t last another winter here. He has the hope; but she has the strength to face the bleak reality. It’s this subtle touches which define this movie.
3. The trip the father and son take to the ocean and warmth is spent for the most part walking on The Road. The father, whose character never changes, is constantly on the alert to protect his son. To him, all people they meet are the enemy and he is not paranoiac in his belief; there are many cannibals on the road. I have seen the movie four times but I still can’t watch all of the scene in the big house where they see the piles of shoes and discover the horrors in the basement and the bathroom. I know the father will not shoot the son in this scene (too early in the movie) but his and the boy’s fear rings so true as they await the woman opening the door, at which point the father must act.
4. People have said that the boy represents Christ and there is dialogue which leads to that conclusion. I know the movie is metaphor but I see it all on a much more basic level: what will humans do at the slow ending of our world? I know that the father represents hope; hope that there will be a better day. He takes all the burdens of the world on his shoulders to protect his son from the horrors but never understands (until close to the end) that the son “gets it.” The boy understands the horrors; he also carries the burden. He has understood the lessons. (Taking about lessons, it's obvious that the boy [aged 10?] can barely read as he struggles to read "Pears" on a can.)
5. We learn the father is dying early on and once he coughs up blood, you know the end is near. But I get no comfort with the deux-ex-machina ending as a nuclear family (father, mother, brother, sister, and dog) appear to care for the boy after the father dies. (We’ve been following you. We were worried about you. The mother tells the boy.) If the father’s voice-over has been correct throughout the movie and there is no sun, all the animals are dead [except for Fido, that is] and all the trees will finally fall from lack of nourishment, then the boy is just going to continue the journey to a slow death.
Huh? You say. What a bummer! But it isn’t. I’ve tried to analyze why I have my reaction to this film since I have no dog in this fight not having read the book. I think it’s because I see a possible future for me and mine and you and yours in this movie if as many scientists believe that without "a fix" the tipping-point for global warming will occur in two years. (Unfortunately for the whole world, too, too many Americans think: OK, that was the tipping point. Tip it back.)
Now, I made my husband, as my science-guru, watch the beginning of this movie as I explained the time line: 5 months pregnant - holocaust event occurs; 4 months later - the mother has lost all hope. My question was: Is such a quick moving natural disaster possible? His answer: Not unless a meteor hit the earth. I asked him because I did want to know if I was watching metaphor or reality. In the end, I think I’m (we’re) watching both.
George Clooney in Up In The Air gives motivational lectures titled “What’s In Your Backpack?" His thesis being that we carry too much emotional baggage. Watching The Road as the father and son push that shopping cart with all their worldly goods I’m asking myself: At the slow end of the world, what must I carry with me to survive?
Some final notes: It looks like The Road got no Oscar nominations. Not surprising for Hollywood but always disappointing. Unfortunately, the worldwide economic crash occurred at the time of this movie and we, Americans, do not like downer movies even in good times. Then The Weinstein Company experienced a financial crisis and must have sold their rights to the Dimension Films and the 2929 Company.
Bad timing, bad luck, but a great movie. Watch it.
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