Of course Wonder Woman is on our radar this month. See which other movies and TV shows we're excited about this month.
Related lists from IMDb users
Title: The Road (2009)
Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.
| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Viggo Mortensen | ... | ||
| Kodi Smit-McPhee | ... | ||
| Robert Duvall | ... | ||
| Guy Pearce | ... | ||
| Molly Parker | ... |
Motherly Woman
|
|
| Michael Kenneth Williams | ... | ||
| Garret Dillahunt | ... |
Gang Member
|
|
| Charlize Theron | ... | ||
| Bob Jennings | ... |
Bearded Man
|
|
 |
Agnes Herrmann | ... |
Archer's Woman
|
|
|
Buddy Sosthand | ... |
Archer
|
|
|
Kirk Brown | ... |
Bearded Face
|
| Jack Erdie | ... |
Bearded Man #2
|
|
|
|
David August Lindauer | ... |
Man On Mattress
|
| Gina Preciado | ... |
Well Fed Woman
|
|
It's a post-apocalyptic world, several years after whatever the cataclysmic event, which has in turn caused frequent quakes as further potential hazards. The world is gray and getting quickly grayer as more and more things die off. A man and his pre-teen son, who was born after the apocalypse, are currently on the road, their plan to walk to the coast and head south where the man hopes there will be a more hospitable environment in which to live. The man has taught his son that they are the "good people" who have fire in their hearts, which in combination largely means that they will not resort to cannibalism to survive. The man owns a pistol with two bullets remaining, which he will use for murder/suicide of him and his son if he feels that that is a better fate for them than life in the alternative. Food and fuel are for what everyone is looking. The man has taught his son to be suspect of everyone that they may meet, these strangers who, out of desperation, may not only try to ... Written by Huggo
"We are not gonna quit. We are gonna survive this." The Man
Survival is the ultimate motif of the Cormack McCarthy Pulitzer The Road. And so too is the film adaptation, faithful to the original while adding what McCarthy can't—the actualization of a landscape barren of life and humans barren of humanity. Then again, the film's failure is being even bleaker than the source, a testimony to the power of the imagination.
Except for a father (Viggo Mortensen) and young son (Kodi Smit-Mcphee), who represents the hope of the human race as the story assumes the trappings of allegorical, post-apocalyptic literature and film where the desolate outside mirrors the lonely inside of the humans, not all of whom are willing to carry on the good fight. Suicide becomes a leitmotif, a companion to hope as if out of a Bergman film, an escape from the horrible aftermath of devastation never explained. So much the better because allegorically there are numerous ways for us to ruin our earth and our spirits. Not the least of which could be nuclear or cannibal; the former does not make an appearance while the latter is omnipresent.
Director John Hillcoat has emphasized more than McCarthy the role, by flashback, of the wife/mother (Charlize Theron), but overall he has taken dialogue directly from the novel and stayed true to the bleak landscape where the sun doesn't shine and the trees fall intermittently like humans giving up the ghost.
The gray tones and beat up humans are like those in most post- apocalyptic films; however, as in Children of Men to a lesser extent, the focus is on how to survive, not even how to avoid death. In both cases, it's up to the young ones to "carry a fire' (the mantra of The Road), itself a metaphor for the strength to survive:
"Everything depends on reaching the coast. I told you I would do whatever it takes." The Man