john hillcoat's THE ROAD (2009)

that The Road has been done for at least a year and a half now had me pretty worried about how it would turn out, but now that i've seen it i understand the delay says much more in its favor than against it. if i were a movie executive who approved financing for an Oprah-approved, bestselling post-apocalypse tale by one of our greatest living writers and then sat down in a screening room two years later and saw The Road, i wouldn't really know what to do either. (besides maybe go home and put a gun in my mouth.)

but the truth is that The Road would have been one of 2008's best films, and is certainly one of 2009's. (and looking at the rest of my year-end list, this is actually one of the most Oscar-y!) i'm embarrassed to say i haven't read Cormac McCarthy's book, and i imagine 90% of the film's strengths are to his credit alone; The Road is the smartest look at our planet's death rattle i've seen, credible to its core by avoiding the gimmick and contrivance that defines these films. there are roaming gangs, cannibals, and all that, but they are rooted in banal man-sized evil, which makes them unreasonably scarier. (my favorite villain is actually the oh-so-obvious one i haven't seen elsewhere: forests of decaying, collapsing trees.) but the man-sized goodness, and its tendency to waver, is what makes the difference; the Man comes from the world before but the Son has never known anything else, and how that defines their relationship is the most compelling thing about McCarthy's story. every moment of their life together is about basic survival, and so their relationship is reduced to a similarly elementary level, leaving the themes wide open. and since it's McCarthy, he takes this broadness as an opportunity to write in miniature.

but, again, i haven't read the book, so i feel foolish trying to talk about all that. but if Hillcoat wasn't brutally faithful to the material, i certainly wouldn't have guessed; The Road doesn't even pull its punches when it could get away with it, and Hillcoat brings a wonderfully lyrical tone that lets emotion assert itself without breaking up the bleak visuals and bleaker outlook.

i'll stop here. The Road is still affecting me a day later (moreso because i sat down to write about it) and i can't really do it justice, not at the moment. one of the best films of the year, no worse for wear after a year in the vault. why didn't this get more attention?

oh yeah because it's DEPRESSING AS ALL HELL