The Road (2009)

A catastrophe has left the earth uninhabitable. It may have been nuclear holocaust, but most likely it was a meteor. It's left unexplained. A bright light and a serious of concussions are all we are given as explanation for the desolate wilderness left behind. A man and his young boy wander the nothingness in search of food, warmth and protection from a squandered world gone insane.

For many this film will be too relentlessly upsetting. There is not much hope to find from a story where families commit suicide just to avoid starvation and where a person will kill you for your shoes...or your meat. For others it will offer the faintest flicker of hope. When humanity is gone and all that's left is the will to fight forward, a friendly face is as comforting as the ocean shore or a beetle. I find myself in the former category.

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee are father and son who have lived for years roaming from place to place searching for the bare necessities. The boy had a mother, but she's long gone and all the two have left are each other and their little shopping cart filled with anything useful. There has been no attempt to civilize or repopulate--the crops are gone and the animals are dead. All that's left are wandering bands of masked men ready to rape and kill. They have turned cannibal.

Dad and Boy, as the credits list them, are heading south to the shore where they may find a better life. They need someplace warm, someplace away from treeless forests and ashy skies. Someplace where men don't look at Boy with lusty eyes and someplace where Man doesn't have to teach Boy to commit suicide should the time come. They have a pistol with two shots and Man tells Boy not to be afraid.

There is not much more to say about this. Among the skeletons and discarded diamonds they find solace in simple pleasures like a can of Coke or a bag of Cheetos. Sometimes they meet other people: Man treats them with suspicion and hostility, but Boy, a sign of a better future, meets them with trust and love. He is anxious for friendship, but still ignorant of the world where this was not so.

Mortensen and Smit-McPhee give powerful performances. As Man, his face is careworn, his voice smokey like the air he breathes. The thinly veiled despair in his eyes sometimes unleashes itself onto the world and the result is very moving. Almost better than him is the boy, whose natural sincerity and chirpy voice makes the horrible events his faces unendurable. They don't live a life, they live an existence and their performances in these situations speak volumes about their talent.

The film is exquisitely shot. Every scene is a painting of orange and grey where dust-covered faces seemingly disappear into the background. In the end, however, this is a film about emotion, not ideas nor any of real substance. It is the realization of the Hobbesian state of nature, but that is not enough to make a film engaging for 100 minutes. The film relies on our sympathy with the two people to assume that the film will end happily, but with the reality they have set up it made it impossible for me to think that way. I simply found a bleak, hopeless story about people destined to die. Maybe not today, but eventually and when it happens I know it will be as black as a cellar full of half-eaten bodies.

2.5/4