THE ROAD (2009)

[indianasmith]

This was a very well-done, melancholy film set in a post-apocalyptic world where nearly all life has been exterminated, and a handful of survivors are eking out a meager existence scavenging for food and trying to find a place where some trace of life lingers.  Viggo Mortensen is the father of a young boy who was born shortly after the never-explained holocaust that left the whole earth a blasted wasteland.  The boy's mother is dead and gone, remembered only in a series of flashbacks by her grief-stricken husband.  Father and son try together to reach the distant coast. hoping to find . . . something.  Life.  People. Animals.  Anything.

   Mortensen is slowly dying of malnutrition and some consumption-like disease  (Radiation poisoning?)  He is trying to prepare the 10 year old boy for the day when he will have to function on his own, and at the same time protect both of them from the cannibals and brigands that scour what's left of America for victims.  They encounter various lost souls and poignant reminders of the civilization that once was as they follow the seemingly endless road to the coast . . .

This is a magnificent film, beautifully filmed and scripted.  I don't know how much weight Mortensen lost to play the title role, but he really does look like a concetration camp inmate near the end.  The chemistry between him and the child he is sworn to protect is very intense, and the dangers they face very stark and real.  The dialogue is sparse, like the barren landscape they cross, and yet still rich with meaning.  This is one of the best films I've seen in a long time.

[trekgeezer]

This is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's  Pulitzer prize winning novel of the same name.

The film is pretty good, but it comes up short of book.    In the book they are simply called the man and the boy.  There are a lot more flashbacks of the wife in the movie. There was very little about her in the book.

The one thing that bothers a lot of people who read the book, is that fact what happened to the world is never explained.

I didn't find the movie as riveting as the book, it is a page turner.