Being familiar with the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, it is an understandable train of thought to think that filmmakers would struggle in recreating the image that is created through the author’s prose. Indeed, the film version is devout a certain emotional quality to it, but that doesn’t take away from the overall product to the point of running the film.
The story of The Road is one that is very familiar with audiences, mainly due to the fact that the tale of a post-apocalyptic world has been rehashed several times over throughout the last several years. We focus on a man (Viggo Mortensen) and his boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) trying to escape the harshness of their former home and reach the assumed safety of the southern seashore, avoiding highway robbers and cannibals in the process. There is no explanation for this recent destruction and instead focusing one’s attention to the future safety of the duo as they make their way through the desolation.
Director John Hillcoat is able to beautifully capture a certain part of McCarthy’s writing in portraying the destroyed landscape around the man and they boy. The way that McCarthy described the desolate setting was in a beautiful hopelessness and Hillcoat was able to translate this paradox onto the screen in a successful manner. Despite the lack of wildlife, vegetation, or even clean, ash-free air, the wide-angle shots of the surrounding devastation are awe-inspiring and at the same time give off the impression that all hope is lost.
The biggest difference between the film and its source material were the characters. Hillcoat was able to avoid exerting any extra effort to make the man and boy heartwarming in any way, and yet the way that they were portrayed created an immensely larger amount of emotion than perhaps McCarthy had intended. In the novel, the dialogue between the man and boy was succinct and to the point. There was a slight hint of deep affection within the interactions between the two, but just like the events leading to the apocalypse, McCarthy diverts attention from this deep connection and forces the reader to accept that it is present without any reassurance. Hillcoat does, at times, present the man as McCarthy had intended especially when dealing with his interactions with the old traveler (Robert Duvall) or the potential thief (Michael Kenneth Williams). Ultimately, however, Hillcoat and Mortensen simply portray a watered down version of the main character, not giving him anywhere near the amount of depth or power that he had in the novel.
McCarthy is, without a doubt, one of the most difficult writers to film. His prose is rivaled by only a few, which must have proven a challenge for the director, producer, and actors alike. And while the film isn’t able to capture the power and emotion that McCarthy instills in his novel, I don’t believe that they could have done any better than their final result. The film and the novel are both extremely powerful and moving and are perfect counterparts to one another: the novel hits the reader with the emotion that McCarthy intends with his beautiful and deep writing and the film is able to visualize the beautiful and hopeless desolation. And, if nothing else, the film will give readers a greater appreciation of a fantastic piece of literary work.
