John Hillcoat proves himself once again to be a director of depth and feeling with this fine adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s grim novel The Road. Viggo Mortensen stars as a character known only as ‘The Man,’ travelling through a post-apocalyptic America with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee). The Man is willing to do anything to protect his son, but with only two bullets left in his gun and hordes of cannibals roaming the countryside the future looks bleak.
John Hillcoat’s Career Before The Road
Hillcoat’s debut movie Ghosts of the Civil Dead (1988) starring singer Nick Cave marked the arrival of a major new talent in world cinema. It would be almost a decade however before Hillcoat made another film, To Have and to Hold (1997), a romantic melodrama set in the jungle starring Tcheky Karyo and Rachel Griffiths as a couple involved in a turbulent relationship.
To Have and to Hold was infused with a fatalistic worldview. Lushly filmed with a soundtrack provided by Nick Cave and two of his Bad Seeds, Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld, To Have and to Hold received little attention from critics and even less from audiences but it confirmed Hillcoat’s ability.
Again it would be almost a decade before Hillcoat directed again. Nick Cave provided the screenplay as well as the music this time with the help of Warren Ellis of The Dirty Three. A bushranger Western, The Proposition (2005) starred Guy Pearce as an outlaw coerced into hunting down his brother and brought Hillcoat the best reviews of his career.
Producer Harvey Weinstein hired Hillcoat to direct The Road and there were rumours of a troubled production with re-shoots involved. The Road takes place in an archetypal cinematic post-apocalyptic wasteland, the kind of which we have seen on film before, but which probably seemed highly original to people who prefer literature to A Boy and his Dog (L.Q. Jones 1975) or Mad Max (George Miller 1979).
Viggo Mortenson Stars in The Road
Despite its familiar elements The Road is compelling and features Viggo Mortenson’s finest performance to date. Wandering through a grim, perennially rain-soaked countryside, The Man with his half-empty gun and his boy carrying a cuddly toy elephant, they undergo a series of episodic encounters with other survivors.
They meet a gang member (Garrett Dillahunt), Michael K Williams (The Wire) as a tormented thief, and Robert Duvall as a blind old man. There are flashbacks showing the boy’s mother (Charlize Theron) who is seen urging them to kill themselves rather than live on through this. Though what actually happened to bring about such devastation is never explained.
The Road is bleak viewing although Hillcoat ends on an uplifting note with the promise of some kind of future. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis once again contribute the score and their music provides a graceful accompaniment to Hillcoat’s haunting imagery.
Rating 4/5
- The Road
- Starring Viggo Mortenson
- Written by Joe Penhall, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
- Directed by John Hillcoat
- Running time 111 mins
- Year 2009
Kevin Sturton - Kevin is a graduate of the 2005 Post-Grad course in Film Journalism run by the BFI and writes mainly about film.
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