Post apocalyptic movies have always had a special appeal to American audiences, especially when times are foreboding. First emerging during the Cold War when the threat of annihilation hung over the populace's heads to today's zombie disaster movies, "The Road" promises to deliver an emotion filled experience.
The story follows a father and son who head out on a journey to reach warmer lands in the south after an unnamed disaster. Their journey is beset with gangs of cannibals, starvation, despair, and armed militants. It stars Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall Guy Pearce, and Charlize Theron.
Main star, Mortensen, described filming "The Road" as "difficult," "It was cold, wet and dirty. But the physical part was actually easy. The challenge was getting inside yourself - just being honest about how afraid you are, how sad you are, and the determination comes from dealing with your own fear. In the end, I kind of had to throw away all the actor stuff because it was about being honest."
Both Mortensen and his co-star, Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays the son spent some time preparing by living in the woods to emulate the feeling of surviving in a harsh world.
The film is based on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. Reportedly McCarthy is very happy with the screne adaptation of his work, his 2005 novel "No Country for Old Men" was also adapted as a movie. McCarthy's work has been in the vein of Westerns, Post-Apocalyptic, and Southern Gothic stories. Born in 1933 no doubt his dystrophy take on the future was influenced by living during the Cold War.
The popularity of such films is fueled by unease with the current world situation ranging from the War on Terror and the economic crisis. Stories like "The Road" allow the viewer to empathize with other characters who are facing nightmarish predicaments. The main characters are never given names other than "man" and "boy" reflecting their status as everyman.
The characters are constantly tested in regards to their humanity when the fragile under pinning of their lives are in constant threat of being taken away. This is amplified by the desolate landscape in "The Road" as they journey through a burnt out world and men are reduced to feeding on each other.
Journeys have always figured into great tales of most cultures for centuries, from Gilgamesh to Mad Max, showing the viewer by proxy their struggles in life and how to ultimately overcome them.
The final point of the story according to the movie's director Hillcoat is a love story between father and son, reflexive of the old line from "Conan the Barbarian"-another movie about a journey in a savage land- "the only thing that remains is a father's love for his son."
Written by Seamus Esparza
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