The Road, dir. John Hillcoat (2009)
One of the most harrowing moments in The Road comes early, when the boy’s father (Viggo Mortensen) reminds him how to kill himself: put the gun in your mouth, aim upwards, and pull the trigger. When the time comes you’re gonna have to do it just like everybody else. The moment perfectly encapsulates the film’s unpretentious bleakess. I must seem to you like I’m from another world, the father tells his son. Mortensen’s pale, emaciated body carries encyclopedic knowledge of a world that has passed to ruins—when he dies, it will die also, making room for the innocence of the child (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and his overwhelming humanity. It’s something, we’re reminded at the end of the film, the father may have been close to forgetting. (more…)
Hello
Cormac McCarthy came out of the rock he’s been under (family life, whatever) and granted the once-illustrious Wall Street Journal an interview. It’s worth the read, since he seems as acerbic and intelligent as ever. Furthermore, he discusses the numerous adaptations of his novels into films. About All The Pretty Horses, he says:
“The director [Billy Bob Thornton] had the notion that he could put the entire book up on the screen. Well, you can’t do that. You have to pick out the story that you want to tell and put that on the screen. And so he made this four-hour film and then he found that if he was actually going to get it released, he would have to cut it down to two hours.”
There you have it, right from the horse’s mouth. The myth of fidelity to the text—-shattered. Even novelists think all that matters is a good film.
