{"id":2789,"date":"2009-12-01T13:43:27","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T19:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flovalleynews.com\/?p=2789"},"modified":"2009-12-01T13:43:27","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T19:43:27","slug":"movie-review-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flovalleynews.com\/?p=2789","title":{"rendered":"Movie review: &#8220;The Road&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Maggie Scott<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Whether by man, meteor or Martian, the cause of the destruction of Earth\u2019s civilization isn\u2019t explained in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy\u2019s best-selling novel, <em>The Road<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 How and why is superfluous in the face of the brutal fact that the world has become a living nightmare for the unlucky few who have survived the apocalypse only to confront abysmal carnage and the equivalent of a nuclear winter.<\/p>\n<p>With all support systems of humanity\u2019s social structures seemingly expunged, a haggard man (Viggo Mortensen) and his dazed son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) have taken to the open road, seeking many, many miles away on the coast an imagined respite from the sky\u2019s rigid pallor and frigid rain.\u00a0 Left behind are a home stripped bare of life\u2019s necessities, as well as the corpse of the man\u2019s wife (Charlize Theron), the boy\u2019s mother; lying somewhere free from the struggle to \u201cjust survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While her will to live shrank inexorably with her growing belief that only unbearable pain lay before her and her family, his will not to quit grows, fed by a \u201cfire within.\u201d\u00a0 In direct contradiction to Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of needs, the man does not let the anguished void of material sustenance blot out the love and protectiveness he feels for his son.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s still a father charged with doing all he can to meet the needs of his son, while at the same time not neglecting his role of teacher&#8212;for the boy still asks questions that demand answers.\u00a0 In the years since the cataclysm began, death has been their constant companion, yet the boy\u2019s moral growth has not been stunted by fear or the gnawing emptiness of his stomach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre we the good guys?\u201d he asks his father, seeking reassurance that they won\u2019t sink to human butchery to keep starvation at bay.\u00a0 While the boy keeps a tight grip on his little stuffed elephant, it\u2019s really the grip of his father\u2019s sheltering arms that calm his nightmares and give him the strength to keep trudging onward across the foreboding landscape.<\/p>\n<p>Since he\u2019s worth saving, the boy believes others must be, too.\u00a0 He challenges his father when the man turns on two men he perceives as threats to his and the boy\u2019s survival. He questions his and his father\u2019s right to take food they find in an underground shelter and their right to trespass in an abandoned house that was his father\u2019s boyhood home.\u00a0 And, most poignantly, he questions his father\u2019s insistence on \u201calways thinking bad things are going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By what grace does the child retain such a hopeful vision?\u00a0 There is less than nothing in his surroundings that would suggest that his and his kind\u2019s inevitable end isn\u2019t total annihilation.\u00a0 And, yet, through nothing but the force of love are we persuaded that the human beings will find a way to come through.\u00a0 Rationally, viewers will feel a low-level hum of skepticism at the proceedings: Exposure to the caustic elements, extraordinary demands on the body and lack of nourishing food should have swiftly felled the man and most certainly the boy.<\/p>\n<p>But the embers of love are enough to fuel body and soul; and, so, they endure\u2026for how long?\u00a0 Nothing catches emotional fire in writer Joe Penhall\u2019s screenplay.\u00a0 Visuals (some footage done at still-devastated Mt. St. Helen\u2019s) work up to a point in immersing the viewer in revulsion, dread and horror.<\/p>\n<p>Neither by stark \u201cshowing\u201d nor by stimulated imagination has director John Hillcoat managed to convey the immeasurable misery of this doomsday scenario.\u00a0 Their pulled punches have spared our feelings with emotional detachment the result and a lost opportunity to take us on a sobering walk through what could be the future of mankind.\u00a0 A Dimension Films release, rated R for violence, nudity.<em>T<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Maggie Scott Whether by man, meteor or Martian, the cause of the destruction of Earth\u2019s civilization isn\u2019t explained in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy\u2019s best-selling novel, The Road.\u00a0\u00a0 How and why is superfluous in the face of the brutal fact that the world has become a living nightmare for the unlucky few who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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