Duane Gundrum Movies The Road–a movie that shows that they can still make decent films

The Road–a movie that shows that they can still make decent films

Last night, I finally got around to seeing The Road. For those of you who don’t know, the movie is about a dystopian future that stars Viggo Mortensen (best known for The Lord of the Rings) as a man who has survived some type of holocaust with his son. Together, they are trying to reach the coast where the father believes better chances of survival exist. The world as they know it is bitter, cold, dark and unforgiving. People are predators to the point where you really can’t trust anyone, even if they appear to be trustworthy. The story becomes one of survival and family, in a way that the much earlier, yet similarly like premise 1975’s A Boy and His Dog, staring Don Johnson, attempted to portray. Whereas the earlier movie became campy, The Road never falls into that childish type of narrative, maintaining throughout the Cormac Mcarthy vision of the future being a surviving daffodil in a desert of horrific surroundings.

It was one of those movies where I kept waiting for “Hollywood” moments, but they never appeared, and I was so glad to see that. The hero’s wife/girlfriend (never made clear) was played by Charlize Theron in a very demure role that shows both how important and insignificant it was all in one cloak. She only appears in flashback scenes, but it was so obvious that her character is with the hero throughout the entire movie, and her lack of appearance throughout any of the present moments makes her character all that more powerful. There is a scene involving the finding of a piano in an abandoned home where her presence in a previous scene playing the piano becomes so much more poignant because of that earlier moment. I’ve rarely seen a movie that is capable of pulling off such a juxtaposition so that the viewer is so aware of the importance of the symbolism of a few played musical notes.

The scenery of the movie is practically a character all on its own. I was seriously reminded of a computer game, of all things, and I’m thinking specifically of Fallout 3, where you wander the wastelands of what’s left of an alternative reality’s dystopian Washington, D.C. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t played that game, but there are moments in the game when the day starts to turn to evening, and the world starts to turn very grey. That is the sense one has of this movie, in that every scene was of that eternal evening from the game, where things can pop out at you at any moment, yet remains centered in reality, where the fear is all that does show up, and mostly the wilderness is empty and uninviting.

There are a couple of cameo actors who show up in the movie that really feed into the narrative. One of whom is Robert Duvall, who plays a very old man (claims he’s 90, even though the main hero doesn’t buy it). It’s a very small part, but with so few actors appearing in the movie, it becomes that much more powerful. Another cameo that shows up is a gang member played by Garret Dillahunt, who is known in sci-fi circles from the various roles that he plays, most significant being The 4400 and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. He has a very small part in the movie, but it was probably the one moment where I couldn’t help but notice who the actor was, something that doesn’t happen with any other character. I guess he’s a little too typecast from his previous roles because I had a hard time separating him from the other characters I’ve come to know. But such recognition did not take away from the fact that Dillahunt is a very good, seasoned actor, and the part that he plays is very important for that moment of the film, and I honestly don’t think too many other actors could have pulled off that one, crucial scene.

What was most important about this movie is that it is probably one of the few movies ever made that has been capable of portraying the emotional feeling of despair, because that is the one thread moving throughout this entire movie. The future the movie inhabits is a horrible one, but the main character never gives up, convinced that he will bring his son to a better world, even if he has to travel the length of the world to find it. There is a huge scene between the hero and his son where the whole “don’t you know what I’ve done for you” gets rightfully translated into “we’re both in this, not just you” from a crucial dialogue delivered by the son, Kodi Smit-McPhee. Up until this moment, I just saw him as “the kid”, and it was this moment where you realized that the stellar acting was not just limited to the adults.

Sadly, they don’t make movies like this any more, or at least they don’t make enough of them. The last few years have been dismal in movie-making, with some of the crappiest movies ever released being thrust upon the viewing public with outrageous ticket fees. This movie goes up against the blockbusters of this era and promises great things, while the reality of our own dystopian present reveals something much worse because the movie did not do very well. It was almost a footnote in the releases of movies, with people avoiding it like a bad Megan Fox movie (okay, any movie with Megan Fox would probably qualify as a “bad” Megan Fox movie). One can hope that more movies like this one get made, but unfortunately, I don’t think it made enough money to cause Hollywood to think twice about the tripe that it tends to release as major releases.

I highly recommend it as it’s one of those movies you probably won’t get to see very often.

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