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The Road (2009 film)

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The Road
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn Hillcoat
Screenplay byJoe Penhall
Produced byNick Wechsler
Steve Schwartz
Paula Mae Schwartz
StarringViggo Mortensen
Kodi Smit-McPhee
Robert Duvall
Charlize Theron
Guy Pearce
Narrated byViggo Mortensen
CinematographyJavier Aguirresarobe
Edited byJon Gregory
Music byNick Cave
Warren Ellis
Production
company
Distributed byDimension Films
The Weinstein Company
Release date
November 25, 2009 (limited)
Running time
113 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$25 million
Box office$27,635,236[1]

The Road is a 2009 post-apocalyptic drama film directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 novel of the same name by American author Cormac McCarthy, the film stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Filming took place in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Oregon. The film received a limited release in North American cinemas from November 25, 2009, and was released in UK cinemas on January 4, 2010.[2][3]

Plot

The Road shares the premise of the novel on which it is based: a father (Mortensen) and his young son (Smit-McPhee) struggle to survive after an unspecified cataclysm has destroyed civilization, killed almost all plant and animal life, and obscured the sun; only remnants of mankind remain alive, reduced to scavenging or cannibalism. The man and boy travel southward, in the hope that it will be warmer. Along the way, they search for shelter, food, and fuel, and avoid bands of cannibals while trying to maintain their own sense of humanity.

The man carries a revolver, but has only two bullets, which he wants to keep in case they need to commit suicide. Flashback and dream sequences spaced throughout the narrative show how the man's wife, who has a much larger role in the film than in the book, committed suicide after delivering the child and losing the will to go on.

After shooting a member of a cannibal gang, the man is left with only one round in his gun. Later, the pair enter a large house, and discover it to be inhabited by cannibals who are keeping live victims in the basement and are harvesting their limbs; believing they will be caught, the man prepares to shoot his son, to spare him the horror and pain of this fate, but the cannibals are distracted and they escape.

Further down the road they find a house with an underground shelter full of canned food, which they feast on, but the man is too nervous to stay in one spot for long. They later encounter an old, dying man (Duvall). The son encourages his initially reluctant father to converse with him and feed him. Arriving at the coast, they are robbed; they catch the thief and the father forces him to strip, leaving the thief naked by the road. As they pass through a ruined town, the man is shot with an arrow but he kills his attacker.

The man begins to cough up blood. After they reach the coast, his condition deteriorates and he realizes he is likely to die soon. Near death, he again emphasizes to his son the values of self-preservation and humanity. After the father dies, the son is approached by a father (Pearce), mother (Parker), two children, and a dog who have been following the man and son for some time out of concern for the boy. The boy agrees to join them.

Cast

In the film, none of the characters are given names, and the credits simply give their role in place of a name.[4][5][6]

Production

Filmmakers sought to implement bleak scenery as the backdrop of post-apocalyptic America for the characters' journey.

In November 2006, producer Nick Wechsler used independent financing to acquire film rights to adapt the 2006 novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy. When Wechsler had watched John Hillcoat's 2005 film The Proposition after reading The Road, the producer decided to pursue Hillcoat to direct the film adaptation. Wechsler described Hillcoat's style: "There was something beautiful in the way John captured the stark primitive humanity of the West in that movie."[9] In April 2007, Joe Penhall was hired to script the adapted screenplay. Wechsler and his fellow producers Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz planned to have a script and an actor cast to portray the father before pursuing a distributor for the film.[10] By the following November, actor Viggo Mortensen had entered negotiations with the filmmakers to portray the father, though he was occupied with filming Appaloosa in New Mexico.[11]

The film had a budget of USD 20 million.[12] Filming began in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area in late February 2008, continuing for eight weeks before moving on to northwestern Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Oregon.[13] Hillcoat preferred to shoot in real locations, saying "We didn't want to go the CGI world."[14] Pennsylvania, where most of the filming took place, was chosen for its tax breaks and its abundance of locations that looked abandoned or decayed: coalfields, dunes, and run-down parts of Pittsburgh.[6] Filming was also done at the 1892 amusement resort (Conneaut Lake Park) after one of the park's buildings (the Dreamland Ballroom) was destroyed in a fire in February 2008. The beaches of Presque Isle State Park in Erie, Pennsylvania were also used.[15] Hillcoat also said of using Pittsburgh as a practical location, "It's a beautiful place in fall with the colors changing, but in winter, it can be very bleak. There are city blocks that are abandoned. The woods can be brutal." Filmmakers also shot scenes in parts of New Orleans that had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and on Mount St. Helens in Washington.[14]

Hillcoat sought to make the film faithful to the spirit of the book, creating "a world in severe trauma," although the circumstances of the apocalyptic event are never explained. Hillcoat said "That's what makes it more realistic, then it immediately becomes about survival and how you get through each day as opposed to what actually happened."[5] Filmmakers took advantage of days with bad weather to portray the post-apocalyptic environment. Mark Forker, the director of special effects for the film, sought to make the landscape convincing, handling sky replacement and digitally removing greenery from scenes.[6]

The Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike, a stretch of abandoned roadway between Hustontown and Breezewood, Pennsylvania was used for much of the production.[8]

Release

Actors Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee, screenwriter Joe Penhall, director John Hillcoat and producer Steve Schwartz at the 2009 Venice Film Festival

The Road was originally scheduled to be released in November 2008. It was pushed back to be released in December, and then pushed back a second time to sometime in 2009. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio decided that the film would benefit from a longer post-production process and a less crowded release calendar.[16] A new release date was scheduled for October 16, 2009.[17] However, according to reports from Screen Rant and /Film, the Weinsteins had decided at the last minute to delay the film to November 25, 2009[3] as a possible move to make the film more of an Oscar contender, bumping their previous film set for that date, Rob Marshall's adaptation of the musical Nine (which was also predicted to be a huge awards contender) into December 2009.

The film had its world premiere in September 2009 at the Venice International Film Festival where it was in competition for the Golden Lion and Silver Lion prizes, and then at the Telluride Film Festival. It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.[18]

The DVD and Blu-Ray versions were released on May 17, 2010, in the UK,[19] and May 25, 2010, in the United States.[20]

Reception

The film currently holds a 75% Fresh rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 196 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. [21] It also has a score of 64/100 on Metacritic, based on 32 reviews, indicating generally positive reviews from critics.[22]

Esquire's Tom Chiarella screened the film before it was released and called it "a brilliantly directed adaptation of a beloved novel, a delicate and anachronistically loving look at the immodest and brutish end of us all. You want them to get there, you want them to get there, you want them to get there--and yet you do not want it, any of it, to end." He also referred to it as "the most important movie of the year."[23] IGN's James O'Connor gave it four and a half out of a possible five stars, calling it "one of the most important and moving films to come along in a long time."

In an early review, The Guardian film critic Xan Brooks gave the film four stars out of five, and described it as "a haunting, harrowing, powerful film," with Mortensen "perfectly cast" as the Man.[24]

Roger Ebert gave the film a mostly positive response, praising Mortenson and Smit-McPhee's work, but he did criticize the film for not being as powerful as the book as well as thinking that the filmmakers should have cut back on the film being way too realistic and put in "more stylized visuals". [25]

Luke Davies of The Monthly described the film as "gorgeous, in a horrible way, but its greater coolness and distance shows just how difficult it can be to translate to screen the innate psychic warmth of great literature." Davies suggested the film's flaws "might have to do with the directorial point of view--it all feels too detached, in a way that the book in its searing intimacy does not," concluding that the film has "too much tableau and not enough acting."[26]

A review in Adbusters disapproved of the product placement in the film,[27] but, as noted by Hillcoat, the references to Coca-Cola appear in the novel, and the company was in fact reluctant about the product being portrayed in the film.[28]

The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday said the film "is one long dirge, a keening lamentation marking the death of hope and the leeching of all that is bright and good from the world...It possesses undeniable sweep and a grim kind of grandeur, but it ultimately plays like a zombie movie with literary pretensions."[29]

Awards and nominations

Award Year Category Result Cast/Crew
BAFTA Awards 2010 Best Cinematography Nominated Javier Aguirresarobe
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2010 Best Actor Nominated Viggo Mortensen
Best Young Actor/Actress Nominated Kodi Smit-McPhee
Best Makeup Nominated
Houston Film Critics Society 2009 Best Actor Nominated Viggo Mortensen
San Diego Film Critics Society Awards 2009 Best Actor Nominated Viggo Mortensen
Best Cinematography Won Javier Aguirresarobe
Satellite Awards 2009 Best Art Direction & Production Design Nominated Chris Kennedy
Toronto Film Critics Association 2009 Best Actor Nominated Viggo Mortensen
Utah Film Critics Association 2009 Best Actor Won Viggo Mortensen
Venice Film Festival 2009 Golden Lion Nominated John Hillcoat
Vits Awards 2010 Best Photography Won Javier Aguirresarobe
Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards 2009 Best Actor Nominated Viggo Mortensen
Best Screenplay, Adapted Nominated Joe Penhall

References

  1. ^ "The Road (2009)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2011-02-08.
  2. ^ "NME". NME. 2009-11-11. Retrieved 2010-02-04.
  3. ^ a b "'The Road' Delayed... Yet Again". Screen Rant. Retrieved 10 September 2009.
  4. ^ "A New Poster for The Road". Dreadcentral.com. Retrieved 2010-02-04.
  5. ^ a b Vancheri, Barbara (April 24, 2008). "Filming wraps up on post-apocalyptic The Road". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  6. ^ a b c McGrath, Charles (May 27, 2008). "At World's End, Honing a Father-Son Dynamic". The New York Times. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  7. ^ Siegel, Tatiana (January 14, 2008). "Charlize Theron hits The Road". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  8. ^ a b "First Look: 'The Road'". USA Today. Retrieved August 7, 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  9. ^ Fleming, Michael (November 7, 2006). "Road to bigscreen". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  10. ^ Fleming, Michael (April 1, 2007). "Penhall paves Road". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  11. ^ Schwartz, Missy (October 7, 2007). "Viggo Mortensen May Hit The Road". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  12. ^ Sullivan, James (October 19, 2008). "A fork (and a bump) in The Road". Boston Globe. Retrieved January 1, 2009. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  13. ^ "Mortensen, Theron on The Road to Pittsburgh". USA Today. January 16, 2008. Retrieved May 27, 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  14. ^ a b Bowles, Scott (August 6, 2008). "Sneak peek: The Road is fiction, but the bleak scenery is real". USA Today. Retrieved August 7, 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  15. ^ www.goerie.com
  16. ^ Zeitchik, Steven (October 18, 2008). "Road rerouted into 2009 release schedule". The Hollywood Reporter. Reuters. Retrieved January 1, 2009. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  17. ^ "Dimension sets October release date for The Road". Sci Fi Wire. May 1, 2009. Retrieved May 1, 2009. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  18. ^ Lambert, Christine (2009). "Photos of The Road premiere at TIFF 2009". Retrieved 2009-11-26.
  19. ^ Foster, Dave (2010). "The Road (R2/UK BD) in May". Retrieved 2010-05-15.
  20. ^ Barton, Steve (2010). "The Road Leads to DVD and Blu-ray in May". Retrieved 2010-03-23.
  21. ^ "The Road Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixter. Retrieved 2011-04-25.
  22. ^ "The Road". Metacritic. Retrieved 2009-11-28.
  23. ^ Chiarella, Tom (May 12, 2009). "The Road Is the Most Important Movie of the Year". Esquire. Retrieved May 13, 2009.
  24. ^ Xan Brooks (2009-09-03). "Venice film festival: The Road". The Guardian. guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-03-07.
  25. ^ Ebert, Roger (November 24, 2009). "The Road". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
  26. ^ "Lost Boys: Jacques Audiard's 'A Prophet' and John Hillcoat's 'The Road'". The Monthly. Retrieved 2010-02-12.
  27. ^ Berman, Sarah (2010). "The Year in Film". Adbusters (87). {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  28. ^ MacKenzie Fegan (2009-11-25). "The Road's John Hillcoat on Cannibals, Product Placement, and the Apocalypse". flavorwire.com. Retrieved 2009-11-27.
  29. ^ Ann Hornaday (2009-11-29). "'The Road': Been there, done this post-apocalyptic reckoning". The Washington Post.
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