I feel a tense awkwardness in my attempt to contemplate John Hillcoat’s film The Road let alone construct a criticism of it. Like Roger Ebert, I am familiar with a few of McCarthy’s works, and I also acknowledge my inability to separate film from book. I have read just three of McCarthy’s works, but what prevents me from delving further into McCarthy’s works is not a dearth of motivation, but rather the incessant urge to reread the works I am familiar with, and the work that has engaged and captured me the most is The Road. In fact, I attribute The Road as the novel that relit my passion for literature and my appreciation of language in general. McCarthy’s ability to manipulate the English language and wrestle mammoth amounts of meaning and emotion into short, terse sentences and pseudo sentences is astounding to me, and his influence has left a residue on my critical lens. Consequently, it is futile for me to discriminate between the film and novel, and I cannot look at what the film is without considering what it could have been.
Now that my apparent bias has been stated, I can continue to review John Hillcoat’s film. What is initially striking about Hillcoat’s The Road is how incredibly well the images of the book are portrayed. The film perpetuates the ethos of the book with its dense, grey, shattered landscapes, omnipresent fog blankets, and palpable coldness. The film not only faithfully recreates these incredible images, it also, after a few terrific frights, forces viewers to vicariously experience the devastating world of persistent cold, wetness, and danger that the man and the son, the main characters, experience. It is an interesting point that the crew chose hurricane-ravaged Louisiana as one of the film sights (remnants of the spray paint markings of relief workers can be seen in at least one scene). I’m unsure if this was merely a convenient location to film a post-apocalyptic story or also a subtle commentary on the political situation in Louisiana. Nonetheless, the film effectively portrays a hypothetical worldwide Katrina and puts viewers into the viewpoint of the catastrophe-ridden characters. Consequently, the film can be disconcerting and it is natural to empathize with Dana Stevens, film critic for Slate.com, who stated, “rather than thinking about the movie afterward, you wait for it to wear off.” This, however, not only exhibits the power of film, it is a summation of its essential flaw.
For as terrifically frightening and pain-stakingly faithful the film is to the novel, it lacks the necessary depth that warrants a critical discussion of what is means to be human, something readers of the novel are almost forced to do. The missing element is McCarthy’s voice. In fact, the most powerful scenes in the film are those that present McCarthy’s narrative. The dialogue, however, comes off as flat or, at its worst, insincere, because there is not enough of McCarthy’s words to breathe life into the characters (the obtrusive score of Hillcoat’s friend Nick Cave augments this undesirable aspect). Without McCarthy’s words, “carrying the fire,” the mantra of the man and the son, doesn’t carry the same weight. In the film, “carrying the fire” means little more than surviving without resorting to cannibalism, the horrific symbol of barbarism. The characters are too flat for it to mean much more. In the book, the saying is perhaps equally vague, but readers know it means something deeper and more profound, as if the characters are describing the essence of humanity. This depth is exactly what is lacking in the film. The Road should not be washed off like the dirt that comes of the man and son when they bathe for the first time in months; it should be worn desperately like the treasured blankets and clothes they occasionally find in vacant and ravaged homes.
Because the essence of humanity is not a discussion point that the film provokes, the most interesting question is one that Stevens ponders in her review: “Does extreme experience equal great art?” Stevens does not answer the question, perhaps because it is rhetorical in nature. Nonetheless, my response would be “no,” and my primary source would be The Road. What presenting an extreme experience does is capture viewers and allow the director the opportunity to present something lasting to the arrested audience. Devastated by the realistic horror of persistent hunger and murderous bands of cannibals, viewers are essentially bound to their chairs, completely engrossed in the action. This is the perfect opportunity for the film to offer a glimpse of what distinguishes humans from other animals. This glimpse, however, never appears in front of the persistent fog that imbues the film.
What the film does instead is present the similarities between animals and humans. Driven by hunger and cold, the man and his son get themselves into potentially deadly circumstances a number of times. In one scene, the man is prepared to kill his son to prevent him from experiencing a fate at the hands of the cannibals that are just outside the door. What gets them in these situations is the animalistic urge for food and warmth. The son foresees the danger when he sees grills, hooks, and axes outside the house, but their entrance is motivated by the biological needs that drive all creatures. Other characters in the film also exhibit their primal urges when they steal the belongings of others and try to kill innocent drifters.
Perhaps the most moving scene that exhibits the primal nature of the main characters is when the son mourns the death of his father. After his father passes, the son mourns listlessly. Confused, afraid, and unsure of what to do, he wordlessly hovers around the body for a number of days. The scene is reminiscent of footage of recently orphaned lion cubs on the National Geographic Channel, and viewers experience a similar distant sympathy for the son; the sadness felt by viewers is not a humanized sadness. It is a dark, primitive sadness that is difficult to understand, let alone articulate.
Because the connection between animals and humans is inexplicable is why the portrayal of humanity is vital to retaining McCarthy’s message: that no matter how dark and dire, the fire of humanity will burn even if it is solely in the heart of a young child. A.O. Scott, film critic for the New York Times, presents the crux of the issue: “McCarthy’s book offers a few hints of consolation. But for these to mean anything, the full horror of the situation has to be grasped, and despair has to be given its due. The film is reluctant to go that far.” What should have been presented in the film is that the man and the son are subject to more than external danger; they are a threat to each other as well. The man follies numerous times in his search for sustenance and nearly makes them food for cannibals rather than finding food. He also consciously gives his son rusting canned food that makes him gravely ill. Likewise, the son forgets to turn off an oil lamp and inadvertently depletes their fuel, and he constantly compromises their survival for the sake of goodness. Readers can’t help but ask why the man doesn’t abandon his son much like his wife did. Because readers must ask this question they can seek the answer, and the answer is because the man and the son are carrying the fire, they are the good guys. This is why the characters are flatter and the symbol of the fire is less exciting in the film. If the film fully perpetuated the danger and despair of the novel, it would have the potential to present the essential question of why the man and the son remain together fighting for survival and more than survival. Because the film does not reach this depth, the opportunity of having an arrested audience goes to waste, and the film is simply full of powerful images rather than a profound message as well.
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