12.11.2009

"You have to keep carrying the fire"

Back in October, I posted how excited I was to see the upcoming movie version of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-Prize masterpiece, The Road.

So, on Monday night, Sara and I got our tickets and sat in a quite empty theatre (thank god) and beheld the depressing tale. I actually warned Sara in advance, as she hadn't read the book - I told her it was pretty depressing, and if she wasn't interested, I'd understand. She was all for it.

The movie is (overall) very loyal to the book - I only spotted maybe one or two things out of place (tiny) , plus the expansion of the wife character while not in the book was actually pretty welcome. The juxtaposition of the wife, who would do anything to get away from the apocalypse, and the husband who would hear of nothing but trying to survive it, it helped really show both sides, and makes you contemplate - in that situation what would you do? Would you give up, or would you always have one thread of hope?
The loyalty to the book was tested in one haunting scene. The book describes, in morbid detail, the Man discovering a wealth of half-eaten bodies in the basement of a home. The thing is these "people" are still alive (gotta keep the meat alive and fresh), and they have parts that have been hacked off one at a time to be eaten by the home owners who have resorted to cannibalism. I was so afraid they wouldn't show the scene in the movie, or back off it some and not give the full impact of what he had found. They didn't. It was haunting, visceral, bloody, and awful...and it had to be there.

There was so much I loved, it's hard to digest it all - my "cry" moment was after the Man made the thief strip down and give him all his clothes - and he left him there, shivering. The brutality of the moment was awful, and yet I also understood his reasoning for doing it.

Viggo is great, Charlize is surpisingly great and the boy is killer.
(there's also a couple of great cameos I had fogotten about - people who were transformed so well that I could only recognize them by their VOICE)

If you loved the book, you won't be dissapointed, I promise.

"I told the boy when you dream about bad things happening, it means you're still fighting and you're still alive. It's when you start to dream about good things that you should start to worry" - the Man

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