Review - The Road

The most depressing film ever made. Harrowing, bleak and hard to watch , the wife bought it on a DVD splurge and we decided to watch it on Sunday.

This is not a Sunday afternoon film. Air Bud is a Sunday afternoon film. Dunstan Checks In and Matilda are Sunday afternoon films. This is the sort of film you feel completely lifeless and empty after watching

IMDB has the plot summary as

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones, and, when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing: just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless cannibalistic bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a rusting shopping cart of scavenged food--and each other.

The snow fall isn't the only gray aspect, the whole film appears to have been shot by a camera with a heavy woolen black sock over the lens. Bleak, unlike Grease, isn't the word. It makes you instantly on edge as Man (Viggo Mortenson) and Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) stumble about in broken footwear and broken spirits. The only time we get any colour is in the flashbacks with Charlize Theron as Man's wife Woman. No character has a name in The Road. We don't know who they are or who they are, just brief glimmers of a past for Man and Woman. All that happens is people walk, people scavenge and cannibals come and go along with an old man, a thief and a couple in a house. There is no hope in the film, and two brief glimmers are quickly squashed. Man gets more and more paranoid and Boy gets more and more whiney, that's all that happens apart from a bit of running here and there, and a brief bit of swimming giving Viggo his obligatory butt shot.

There is no way possible anyone could enjoy this film. It's a good film, don't get me wrong, it's well acted, the script is well written what there is of one and the cinematography is excellent, but the end of it had Mrs MC in tears and me looking for a noose to put me out of my misery. It just comes across as seriously worthy and begging for an Oscar