Tuesday, December 01, 2009

The Road in 150 Words or less

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Probably the best movie that could be made from the book. All the actors are good - Viggo it goes without saying, and I was happy Smit-McPhee acquit himself nicely (happy because he definitely seems a good fit for the Right One remake now) - and the film is beautifully shot. Death and squalor never looked so lovely.

But where McCarthy's astonishing prose tipped the scales from merely being an intellectual exercise where these no-named symbols move around expressing concepts to feeling like so much more than only the parts of the sum, Hillcoat's not there as a film-maker to bridge that gap visually, emotionally. That's not really as big a slam on Hillcoat as it might seem - McCarthy's such a good writer I don't know who could bridge that gap, really. Noble, beautiful, well pieced together, but ultimately thwarted. Read the book.
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3 comments:

crazycloud said...

the road is playing NOWHERE
its almost like the studio is trying
to kill it. The revenues from last
weekend are tiny. What gives?

Jason Adams said...

I'd have to double-check it but I do think it's getting the slow platform type release, crazycloud, where it's just opening in a few markets at first and branching out from there. I think. I could be wrong - who the fuck knows with the Weinsteins?

Oh and I checked IMDb before publishing this and IMDb just listed Thanksgiving as the date with no specifics on it opening in just a few cities or what, so I don't know. Hrm. Effin' Weinsteins.

RC said...

When I saw the action packed theater preview I thought -- that is not the movie that I pictured in my head when I read the book.