HYPEBy Wong Yeang Cherng
If you wake up to a world devoid of life and stained grey from hopelessness and death, would you rather die or carry on with life?
Brace yourself to ponder over this question when you watch the film adaptation of Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Road. Written by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men), The Road is about the lives of a man and his son who wake up to a post-apocalypse America.
The ominous tale is told through the eyes of two survivors – The Man and his son, The Boy – after a global disaster reduces the world to nothing more than pathetic ruins. What unfolds is an epic story of a journey across charred landscapes to a perceived “salvation” in the south. Along the way, the pair meet with numerous obstacles such as the threat of cannibals and surviving the harsh wasteland that the world has become.
Set to hit the screens this year, The Road captures the essence of the human spirit and the ultimate fight for survival in a seemingly hopeless and bleak world.
Taking the role of The Man is Viggo Mortensen, who played a similar role as the noble, grimy-faced Aragorn in the wildly popular Lord of the Rings trilogy, though in vastly different settings. Accompanying him is Australian actor and winner of the AFI Young Best Actor Award 2007 Kodi Smit-McPhee for his role in Romulus, My Father.
With the critically acclaimed and delicate nature of the story, the director of the silver screen adaptation is set up for a gruelling task. However, a sneak peek from the official trailer of what the director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) has done seems to point to a classic film in the making. Esquire magazine has called it “a brilliantly directed adaptation of a beloved novel”, even going as far as to name it “the most important movie of the year”.
Fans of feel-good movies will not be too pleased to know that Hillcoat has promised that the film will stay “faithful to the spirit of the book”, which means that one can expect horrific, grim and revolting images of the half-dead, kept imprisoned in ghastly conditions and only winding up eaten by cannibals, as portrayed in the book.
Fans of the book will delight in the emotional depth and compelling storyline that the film promises to bring. And you are kept at the edge of your seat rooting for father and son to make it through the daunting trials and tribulations.
But for those who know better, The Road is deeper than the average violent/horror flick. The movie is, in its own right, a tear-jerking, heart-wrenching and heart-warming narrative of a father’s unconditional love and the unwavering desire to survive in a bleak world that encapsulates death itself.
The Road is slated for a worldwide theatrical release on Oct 16.