The Road

[Bukaki_Lovechild]

This is the MOST depressing, despondent, hopeless, sad film I have ever sat down to watch.
It is a vision of Hell painted in gray and guilded in hunger.
This movie is like 2Girls1Cup or Goatse; once seen, you cannot unsee it.
And you will want to unsee it.
I guess if you don't have kids it might not be as impacting but IF YOU HAVE KIDS, DO NOT SEE THIS FILM.
Seriously.
I love the post-holocaust shit and this might have just cured me of my urge.
A week later and I am still suffering PTSD from this evil cellulose managerie.
Not a date movie either, unless you are into the whole sterile, sexless date thing.
Old Yeller is a family comedy in the shadow of this aftermath.

The production quality is unbelievably flawless.
Visually it is a stunning display that reminds you in every frame what they must be going through.
It was so immersive that I forgot to look for consistancy flaws.
It was so immersive that I don't think I blinked the whole time.
The Art Direction and Second Unit shots were absolutely bleak and lifeless, totally consistant with the story.
The ash scenes were shot at Mt. St. Helen's and most of the rest of it was either in Oregon or Pennsylvania.
To give you an idea of how dark their world is, there is one guy credited as "Baby Eater" and my internal comment was "Only one?"

The acting is superb.
I would never be these people but I can sympathize with them.
The actors pull off what could otherwise be a "WTF?" script.
The biggest complaint in most of the reveiws I have seen (aside from the depressing tone) have been the whininess and overall lack of survival ability of the main characters.
Like I said, I would never be them but I found myself thinking of them as average, incompetent, Birkenstock liberals stuck in a survival situation for which they are wholly unprepared.

Viggo (Aragorn) made it totally believable for me because I've known libs like him, not stupid but not having a well thought out plan either.
The kid's role was well acted.
Even though his character is given a lot of range, especially for a child actor, he keeps it together.
Viggo compared him to a young Brando.
That might be a little hopefull but the kid is talented.
Charlize Theron is just f'n hot (even when she's preggers) but her's is the only character I cannot really get into.
There is something detached about her role, like it was written by a guy (yeah, it was), but she pulls it off.
I don't believe her selfish, narcissistic character but I believe her.
Things have to happen to make the story a story but her role could have been better written, unless there is a backstory in the book that I am missing.

The black guy toward the end, Michael K. Williams, was the fucking best!
This guy stole the show, hands down, as far as I am concerned.
I still see his drooling face and I pity his character.
A week after I watched the film and it still has the ability to elicit a response.
I cannot wait to see him in something with more screen time.

I wasn't going to watch this movie until I found out Robert Duvall was in it.
Glad I made the decision.
It is more depressing than anything which has ever crossed my mind, idly or with intent, but it was damn good film.

10 of 10 for genre and 10 of 10 overall.
Its a great movie but you are going to wish you had watched something else.
It might get an Oscar of some type.
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[At0micGarden]

I only read your first sentence and last paragraph because I have been waiting to see this since I read the book in '06 (one of my faves of all time). Cormac McCarthy is the fucking shit.

Did you watch the screener of this that just got leaked? How was the quality? I'll read your post after I see it

PS looks like the screener is missing 24 mins from the theatrical version, I think I might try to catch it at this little art house theater before it leaves this week.

[Bukaki_Lovechild]

I don't think there were any spoilers there.
Especially if you already read it.


If there is another 24 minutes I'll have to find it.
My copy is 1:49, so methinks it has the added stuffs, maybe not.
The copy quality was superb!
I think it might have been an Oscar Submission DVD rip, except it was an .flv.

Even though I DL'd this, I would recommend seeing it in the theater, where there are other people whose faces you can look into as you leave the cinema.
Plus there are not as many suicidal implements in a theater as in your home.

Okay, this is the only spolier:
It my favorite line:
"They are going to rape me and they are going to rape your son, then they are going to kill us and eat us both."
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[At0micGarden]

That seems like the right runtime, the copy I grabbed was way shorter. I got the good version now and can't wait to want to kill myself tonight, if I don't get around to seeing it in the moovy houz.

I still think you should read the book, I would have to assume that the movie is good in its own right, cuz there is simply no way that book can directly translate to a film...most of it is the man's internalizations and sweeping prose describing the landscape. I read it twice back to back, real short read. Also, for McCarthy at his most disturbing best, check out Blood Meridian.

[Bukaki_Lovechild]

No!
No!
No!
Bukaki likes happy endings!

LOL!

My friend has the book and wanted to read it first.
I could tell this was a largely first-person-cerebral flim, so I advised he see it first.
The things you said about his internalizations are given to the audience in exactly the way you would expect them to be delivered.
That was what I meant about nuance (I hate when that word is misused but it is appropriate here).
You can see in Viggo's face what he is thinking.
You might not agree but you can see what he is thinking and THAT is what makes it such an outstanding film to me.
You don't have to agree with his decisions or personality like you are expected to sympathize with the main character in most films.
Due to the sheer horror of his situation, you are glad to be a mere observer, relieved that more is not expected of you.
Because so much of the film is about the ambiance, you absorb it while the characters react to it.

If it is a short read I might pick this up from my friend.
I'd like to know more about [POSSIBLE SPOILER] the relationship between him and her, her reason to bail, and why it all happened (asteroid impact, I presume )

Remember to keep your local suicide hotline number handy and hide all the pills!
This could be the awesomest birth control.
If your wife sees this she may never want to have kids....
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[At0micGarden]

Saw it last night. Jesus. Fucking sad!!!!

Hey, who wants to see 2 hours of Viggo Mortenson and a little boy sobbing and putting guns in their mouths in case they need to pull the trigger to avoid being cannibalized?

I was very impressed, they did an awesome job with it. Beautifully shot.

The whole "wife" element was expanded upon for the movie. In the book, there were just teo or three very short paragraphs of him remembering those times, specifically the scene with the fires outside and him turning on the bathtub, not knowing why. The best part about the book is that it left the disaster open to interpretation. I took it as some sort of a biblical apocalypse, nothing specific, just the "end of the world". Here is the first page of the book:

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasn't sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.

[At0micGarden]

And the event:

The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions. He got up and went to the window. What is it? she said. He didnt answer. He went into the bathroom and threw the lightswitch but the power was already gone. A dull rose glow in the windowglass. He dropped to one knee and raised the lever to stop the tub and then turned on both taps as far as they would go. She was standing in the doorway in her nightwear, clutching the jamb, cradling her belly in
one hand. What is it? she said. What is happening?
I dont know.
Why are you taking a bath?
I'm not.
Once in those early years he'd wakened in a barren wood and lay listening to flocks of migratory birds overhead in that bitter dark. Their half muted crankings miles above where they circled the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl. He wished them godspeed till they were gone. He never heard them again.

[Bukaki_Lovechild]

Fuck.
Those excerpts are as bleak as the film....

You should make the rest of that Tiny Type, in case someone else stumbles across the thread and doesn't want the spolier.
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[Shonuff]

I thought it was pretty good. One of the most brutal and bleak post-apocalyptic worlds ever.