The Road

One of the more commercial films that I saw this year, "The Road" is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzker prize winning novel.

Set in a post-apocalyptic America, the film tracks the journey of an unnamed father and his son south towards the coast.

Visually, the film captures the devastation of the novel beautifully, although there's an attempt to open up the novel by showing larger scale destruction that feels a little superfluous.

As it turned out, I had finished reading the novel a couple of weeks earlier and McCarthy's prose was still very much alive in my memory.

Although the performances of the two leads (Viggo Mortensen and Cody ...) were great and there are a small number of very effective cameos, the impact of knowing the source material ultimately diminished the film to being a good adaptation of a great book, rather than being an exceptional film.

There's a poetic quality to McCarthy's style that the film is unable to capture. One of the best reviews I've seen was Rick Groen's in the Globe. He suggested (correctly, in my view) that the book represented an odyssey, while the film was simply a journey.

As a result, I'm a little conflicted about recommending the film. It may be best to see it without reading the novel, though I'd recommend the novel without hesitation.
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