The Road

If anyone hasn't read Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road," it's a great book. It is a novel that has the potential to be popular for decades and it definitely gets my vote for the first great novel of the 21st century. Pick it up and immerse yourself in the end of the world.

Obviously, I love the book, but how does the movie fare? The last novel-turned-cinematic masterpiece by McCarthy was "No Country for Old Men" and last time I checked that won awards from some guy named Oscar. I could be wrong, maybe I'll IMDb it later.

One of the aspects that makes "The Road" a timeless work of literature, is its lack of names. Viggo Mortensen plays "the father" and Kodi Smit-Mcphee plays "the boy." The father and the boy live in post-apocalypse America. It has been ten years since the entire country was devastated by some form of war. The sky is permanently darkened, most animals have died or been eaten, even the trees have started dying and fall at regular intervals, and the entire human population has degenerated into roving bands of cannibalistic cults. The father is trying to reach the coast with the boy before the onset of winter, to try and find something better for themselves.

If your Lit teacher asked you for the themes of "The Road" you would probably say: despair, hopelessness, moral degradation. "The Road" shows us a future where there is no food, and no hope - where the people turn to eating each other because literally there is no alternative. The father and the boy seem to be the only ones left who haven't let themselves destroy their humanity. They survive off each other. Their love for each other is the only thing that keeps them going and it shows. I almost teared up...almost.

The movie stays fairly close to the book, barring a few annoying flashbacks. Some scenes have been removed, and some added, but it's about as accurate as it can be. That said, the book is twenty times better. There is something about the written word and a person's imagination that can't be translated to screen. The book moved me farther than this movie ever could.

Somehow, Viggo Mortenson wasn't nominated for best actor. In my opinion, this is the biggest snub, because he does absolutely amazing and he always has, in every movie he has ever been in.

Three out of Four stars

-Christopher O'Connell