{"id":4872,"date":"2009-11-25T01:11:15","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T05:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4872"},"modified":"2009-11-25T01:20:36","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T05:20:36","slug":"the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4872","title":{"rendered":"The Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the-road-movie1\"<\/a>During my<\/span> <\/span>interview<\/span><\/a> <\/span>with Shadow Billionaire<\/em> director Alexis Spraic, she mentioned that she didn\u2019t like the way that making documentaries had become a \u201ccompetition about who can make the saddest film.\u201d This line of thinking isn\u2019t just limited to documentaries, indeed, many a fiction film falls into the trap of trying to bum out the audience more than the last downer they might have seen. Lars<\/span> <\/span>Von Trier<\/span><\/a> has spent the last 15 years rubbing our noses in how horrible the world is, and certainly any scenarist dealing with future events will continuously remind us how the future will be the culmination of our worst fears. When Pauline Kael reviewed Blade Runner<\/em>, she wrote that the movie \u201ctreats this gritty, retrograde future as a given \u2013 a forgone conclusion, which we\u2019re not meant to question.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Hillcoat\u2019s The Road, <\/em>an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy\u2019s novel, at least vaguely suggests how it arrived at its dank, depressing, rainy, barren, wasteland of a future. It\u2019s never stated outright, but the implication is massive earthquakes caused the desolate landscape, free from animals and agriculture and drenched in necessary cannibalism. Whether nuclear war caused the earthquakes is anyone\u2019s guess, but that\u2019s why referring to The Road<\/em> as post-apocalyptic<\/span><\/a> would most likely be correct. This vagueness and confusion is the overriding emotion at work within the film, as an unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) fend for themselves amidst constant threats by violence and scavengers.<\/p>\n

\"the-road-movie2\"<\/a>McCarthy\u2019s novel No Country For Old Men<\/em> also played with the constant feeling of uncertainty, but it certainly wasn\u2019t as oppressive and depressing as The Road<\/em>. Hillcoat\u2019s adaptation is simply a standard feel-bad movie, it\u2019s not illuminating, entertaining, and the repetitive run and hide, then attack, then run and hide again, and then stumble upon possible shelter and food structure, has far more in common with a video game than was probably intended. Mortensen and Smit-McPhee are fine considering what they are given to do, look sad and scared, and make sure not to say anything remotely interesting or free from clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

The Road<\/em> plays like a 2 hour variation on the same idea, that as stated in the dialogue it\u2019s \u201cfoolish to ask for luxuries.\u201d Each scene is nearly identical to the previous one, grim and trying to prove how the characters have to face self-preservation through unnecessary odds. As a movie, it\u2019s really just punishment, relentless without purpose, and a big step down from Hillcoat\u2019s visceral and thrilling western The Proposition.<\/em><\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t that Hillcoat has necessarily done anything wrong; the casting is excellent (Smit-McPhee looks exactly like his screen mother Charlize Theron), there are a few haunting images, such as when Theron deliberately commits suicide by walking into the unknown darkness of fire and destruction rather than struggle through another moment (\u201cevery day is a lie\u201d), and you\u2019ll certainly leave the theater in a worse mood than you entered with. But it\u2019s never clear why the movie needed to be made, unless Hillcoat wanted to show that he could compete with Bela Tarr\u2019s 7 \u00bd hour Satantango<\/em> by having just as many endless shots of downtrodden people walking down a dirt road.<\/p>\n

\"theroadpic3\"<\/a>There is<\/em> a way to make an engaging film in this style, Gus Van Sant\u2019s <\/em>post-apocalyptic black comedy Gerry<\/em> is very funny, and consists primarily of shots of nature and its two characters (both named Gerry, played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) screaming idiotic and panicky things at each other. There are glimmers of Gerry<\/em> in The Road<\/em>, but no humor or outlet for the endless pain on display.<\/p>\n

There are audiences for this sort of film, someone has to look forward to and sit through Oscar-bait and\/or Holocaust movies that tell us, as if for the first time, that the Holocaust was unpleasant. And for those who thought last year\u2019s \u201cman is an uncontrollable violent animal\u201d parable, Fernando Meirelles\u2019 Blindness<\/em> was too uplifting, The Road <\/em>is for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During my interview with Shadow Billionaire director Alexis Spraic, she mentioned that she didn\u2019t like the way that making documentaries had become a \u201ccompetition about who can make the saddest film.\u201d This line of thinking isn\u2019t just limited to documentaries, indeed, many a fiction film falls into the trap of trying to bum out the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[6027,5188,5848,6024,600,6020,6016,6018,1267,1129,153,6014,8865,6023,6021,4168,6030,6026,6019,6022,283,681,1344,4600,6028,4372,5885,108,993,310,5189,6017,6025,5971,6015,6029,4573,6013],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9335,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4872\/revisions\/9335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}