The Road

Title: The Road

Director: John Hillcoat

Year: 2009

Country: USA

Studio: Chockstone Pictures

Rating: **** (4/5)

Post-apocalyptic pictures can be the best kind of movies if they're done right. Never mind popcorn drivel like The Day After Tomorrow and other films that are more concerned with aesthetics than storylines, but films like The Quiet Earth and The Day After, where not just the visual representations of the apocalypse were shown to us, but its after-effects and how the ends were just as important as the means to the survival of its characters.

The Road is a film that's done right. It takes our deepest fears and puts them on screen for us not only to see, but experience. We're thrust into a world where savage is the norm and survival is a minute-by-minute struggle that is only very briefly won before an entire new battle begins. This would be an impossible scenario to deal with on your own, let alone with a child in tow -- especially a child who with every second reminds you of what you used to have and lost.

Viggo Mortensen plays an unnamed father to an unnamed boy (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) whose age is never truly known. What we do know is that he was born very shortly after the world as we know it came to an end, and that his mother (Charlize Theron) began to lose her mind almost immediately afterward. In her brief time on screen, she lets the viewers know just how against she was bringing her son into this world, especially in its current state, and how badly she wants to die and take her son with her. The father, in various flashbacks, is shown trying to convince the mother that life is worth living and that they will survive, but in the end she runs off, never to be seen again and presumed dead.

It's not exactly clear how much time had passed between the mother running out and how long the father and son stayed in their house, but it's really not relevant. What we are shown is that the boy is just a few years shy of puberty, which means father and son have been fighting off the perils of this dead world for quite some time. They're both malnourished, as is everyone that they encounter. The event that caused the apocalypse is never really established, although there are sequences of earthquakes that come about every so often, which along with the dust and overall lack of sunlight, gives credence to the notion that every source of food on the planet is dead. They're both weary of the road they travel on because they've encountered cannibalistic tribes who are known to rape and murder women and children. It's obvious to the viewer how arduous a journey this really is pretty early on, especially after the father is forced to kill someone whom he believes to be a member of these tribes.

Whether or not they reach the coast after their long journey is another irrelevant fact, because all hope is lost from the beginning. The reason they travel is because they know no other way and the only thing they can really do is keep going from place to place in search of temporary food and shelter.

The film is a visual representation of years of hell, all edited down to just under two hours. But in that time, it offers us a tale of sentiment in a world where attachments are just an easy way of getting yourself killed, as well as the plight of a father who would do anything to anyone in order to assure his son's safety. It may disturb you, make you cry, and/or make you reassess your own relationships -- but that's what most good movies do.