I really dug it as well. Most people have problems with the score or the omissions from the book. Most people just don’t understand, Andy.
I read the book and was in love with it. I haven’t seen the movie but the film doesn’t have the same look as the world painted in the book.
Now, that said, I will still see the film if it comes to my area and if not I’ll rent it. But based on what I’ve seen, it’s missing the tone of the book, which is what interested me.
Question, Vocalities: If you read The Long Goodbye and enjoy it, does that prevent you from enjoying Altman’s The Long Goodbye? Completely different, an odd adaptation, but both are great in my opinion.
I think one of the biggest difficulties people face on this board is getting over the source material and separating the source from the adaptation. Translation across mediums is always going to breed differences, but that’s what makes adaptations worthwhile; the differences, not the similarities. Films shouldn’t be shortcuts for people who don’t want to read the book, they are beholden to no one and are obligated only to be interesting.
It’s a pretty forgettable film. Awkward scoring, annoying voice over, bad effects (when the trees started to fall on them), and flashbacks were quite unnecessary. Also, the look seemed tired and uninspiring.
Forgettable is the last word I would use to describe it, The Road stuck with me for weeks after seeing it. The cinematography was gorgeous and Viggo’s performance was insanely good and filled soo much emotion.
Also I don’t understand the awkward scoring complaints, While Nick Cave’s score doesn’t quite match the one he did for Jesse James (one of my favorite film scores ever), it was still far better than most.
Joshua, perhaps you missed the part of my post where I said I’d see it regardless. But, it’s often difficult to simply “get over” source material. You have this book and you love it, and you love everything about it, it’s totally natural to see the film and have a hard time really getting into it if it’s not representing the book’s qualities.
Adaptations aren’t shortcuts, and I think it’s downright goofy that you embrace differences. Personally, if you’re going to adapt a book into a film, and you insist on changing majors events or the entire tone, look, or feel of the source material, then why not just do your own original idea? A filmed version of a book is a representation of that book, so if you change it…well, you’re misrepresenting it. I fully understand not everything is going to be exactly the same, and that’s fine, but at least get what’s important down.
I’m not going to complain if they don’t have the man hit by lightning, or various other minor moments or phrases that made me fall in love with the book…but the overall LOOK painted in book, and the bleak tone, and the age of the child, things like that…that should be kept.
I understand where you’re coming from but mostly disagree. You can enjoy both separately, but it’s even more difficult to truly separate the two versions and judge them both all on their own.
Sorry Vocalities, I didn’t mean to come off like I was talking down to you or something, I was posing that question more as a gauge as to how much you’d enjoy the film, not that you were automatically slotted into one or the other category.
As for your standards of adaptation, I have to completely disagree. How is it ‘goofy’ to embrace differences? I think if you watch a film expecting a faithful translation and instead get something completely separate you can ruin the end product for yourself, in effect sabotaging your own enjoyment. That to me is goofy.
A great film is a great film to me, and in order to create something really meaningful and also unique I think you can’t hold it to any rigidly defined boundaries. Just thinking of the neutering that Elevator to the Gallows, Touch of Evil, Guy Maddin’s Dracula, Blade Runner, The Dead Zone, The Long Goodbye, or The Joke would be forced to endure if they weren’t given the freedom of noncommittal adaptation makes me recoil.
I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy a faithful translation every now and again (I have to note here that The Road is fairly faithful with a few structural and directorial flourishes I really enjoy, e.g. the flashbacks), it’s just that I find that the adaptations that end up meaning something to me personally are usually the ones in which the director is given free reign and feels no obligation to the source material.
I guess I’m of the mind that in filmmaking nothing should be sacred but the final product. Everything else is of lesser importance.
Double Post
I haven’t seen the film yet (I know, right?) but I’ve heard the soundtrack (being a Cave/Ellis fan) and I really don’t understand some critics’ dissatisfaction with it. I mean, Christ, the Cave/Ellis duo is rock solid and their film music has always been good, they just have that wonderful sensibility (I’m also referring to Cave and company’s work on Ghosts of the Civil Dead, among others). It really baffles me on how heavily they’ve been criticized for this particular soundtrack (why this one? I’m wondering. Their style of writing film scores hasn’t really changed at all in 20 some years …). Granted, I haven’t seen the film, so perhaps the critics’ negative response to it is less a criticism of Cave’s music than a mismatched commingling of sound and vision.
There are some spoilers ahead.
I think the reason it hasn’t gotten any love is the subject matter. Unfortunately due to bad timing it LOOKS just like another in a long line of end-of-the-world-survival-stories, which it isn’t. Well, the book isn’t, I haven’t seen the film either and don’t intend too. I just can’t sit through such depressing subject matter as this only to see it end with very little hope or redemption. I made it through the book and wouldn’t want to read it again so the movie is of no interest to me.
Deckard, we are completely in agreement. Ghosts… of the Civil Dead has a great and incredibly appropriate soundtrack, as does The Proposition, and now so does The Road. Great stuff.
@ Strawdawg, perhaps you forget how the book ends. I was left with a great sense of hope for the boy. While hope for humankind is in deficit. I felt that he was going to be alright, albeit for a short time I’m sure, but for now I can exhale a sigh of relief. The film holds true to this.
more spoilers:
No, I certainly remember how it ended. Yes the boy ends up in the hands of people that take care of him, but the father ends up dying not knowing what happens to his son. For all he knows his son ends up being eaten by cannibals. No thanks. I hated it and don’t care to subject myself to that on film. The story was one long, depressing tale.
It’s amusing to me that someone who names himself after Straw Dogs can write, “I just can’t sit through such depressing subject matter as this only to see it end with very little hope or redemption.” Huh, pot calling kettle something. Finally saw The Road and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I haven’t read the novel though it’s been sitting on my shelf for the last two years. Maybe it’s good not to have too many preconceptions since people seem to be attacking the film for both being too faithful to the novel but also not being faithful enough and measuring a film against a novel is never a good idea. I was thoroughly unimpressed by The Proposition too so I wasn’t expecting much here. But Viggo’s performance (who gives his finest performance outside of a Cronenberg film) really carries the film for me. It was touching portrait of small glimpses of humanity in a post-human world. And yes, the score is intrusive but it’s also excellent. I guess the film arrived a little too late and is now lost in a glut of post-apocalyptic horror/sci fi..
My thoughts:
2/5
My two stars are for the script (which is mostly from the novel) and the acting (which is mostly good), but the film fails massively due to the lack of a stylistically bold director and a horribly sentimental score that undercuts it at every chance. The film is instantly better without the score.
McCarthy did something wonderful with the novel—he stripped down the language and narrative until there was almost nothing left—it’s as sparse and as bleak as the landscape the characters wander.
The film does nothing to reflect that. It feels like it wants to be Oscar-bait, except it’s in no way mainstream enough to have a shot. The later scenes with the boy come off as shrill and out of place. The added scenes with the Wife don’t add to the Man’s character the way they were intended—they just get annoying.
The way to have done this film (if it should have been attempted at all) is to do it verite—all handheld, no score, minimal dialog, and no flashbacks. Let the actors and the situation show the story.
The title of this thread is something I’ve been asking myself for months. McCarthy is my favorite author and I had been waiting for this film for awhile. When I saw it it hit me hard, just as the book did. I cried at the end of the book and had I not known what was coming I would have cried at the end of the film, but I still teared up. Viggo’s performance was astounding and Hillcoat still contiunes to impress me.
I just can’t understand why The Road seems to be completely forgotten this award season, while Avatar continues to get nominated for EVERYTHING, even by the WGA! I really hope that with 10 slots for Best Picture, The Road can pull an upset and get nominated, at the very least Viggo deserves another nomination.
Josh, I disagree about the score although I think you already had this discussion on another thread. I think Hillcoat overuses the score but it’s neither “horribly sentimental” nor does it “undercut” the film. I think Cave and Ellis are incapable of making sentimental music (maybe you’re confusing them with James Horner). I also don’t see how the film qualifies as “Oscar-bait” beyond the fact that anticipation of the film led people to speculate that it could garner a few nominations (speculation which is now dead). I think the film is fairly stripped down. Comparing it to the novel in that sense is not quite fair. I think the film is closer to a film like Stalker than you allow.
The added scenes with the Wife are largely unnecessary, I would agree, but they don’t detract from the film. The scene where she leaves is quite effective, I think. I would even think they were added after the fact if not for the presence of Charlize Theron. The film would probably have been better if it was sparer but then again you’re evaluating the film for what it’s not and not for what it is.(Possible Spoilers)
First off, I enjoy Cormac McCarthy, but I’m not in love with this novel. Secondly, I loved The Proposition. However, Hillcoat’s film adaptation just fell short for me.
To answer your question, this is why The Road gets very little love from me:
The added scenes with the wife detracted enormously from the film. This is a story about the father and son’s relationship, and through the gaze constructed by the film, suddenly the boy appears to be the father’s last piece of the wife he loved so dearly. She gave up and took the easy route, and in the novel I didn’t feel that I was ever asked to feel sympathy for her. In the film, her overwhelming presence in the melodramatic flashbacks made the film’s ending with the father’s death much less devastating (for the father) and hopeful (for the son) because their relationship wasn’t as meaningful. The novel aside, her character only detracted.
The music was incredibly heavy-handed, and only made some pretty solid performances and scenes seem cliche and cheesy.
The over color-corrected or tinted look to the film was used as a constant cop-out for constructing the authentically dreary and cinematic images that the story calls for. The film’s look only pulled me away from the reality of the post-apocalyptic world, because it just looks like a movie rather than a world in which these characters are attempting to survive.
Michael K. Williams’ performance did kick ass though.
Ari: I couldn’t disagree more, and no, there’s no confusion here.
Comparing this film to Stalker is… well, I just don’t have anything nice to say about that.
“Comparing this film to Stalker is… well, I just don’t have anything nice to say about that.”
Uh, it’s a metaphysical post-apocalyptic road movie as well. The comparison speaks for itself.
As for why the music is sentimental, you might want to justify your blank assertion. The sparse piano pieces are more like Satie than anything bombastic. It’s no more sentimental than what they did with their other scores (or listening to The Dirty Three).
They may be similar in some sort of loose genre of story-telling, but very different in themes, and in my opinion, there is a huge difference in quality and originality.
So is Motorama but I wouldn’t compare it to stalker
Obviously not.
And the score is sentimental because it underscores obvious emotional points in the film that amounts to telling us, “FEEL HERE”, rather than allowing those emotions to grow organically out of the film.\
Sorry you like the film so much that you’re taking my criticism personally, but it is what it is.
I think Ari wasn’t making a qualitative comparison between The Road and Stalker, more of a genre-related one, and for that there is undeniable validity.
As for the wife’s presence in the movie, I think it helped the film in the end, Hillcoat using it as a very effective shortcut in furthering the bond between the boy and his dad, as opposed to diluting it. In fact, I can’t really fathom how you would take her absence as having a negative effect on your view of the relationship between the two leads, other than that you were pre-opposed to any slight alterations to the plot of the book.
It’ll be interesting to see how this film stands in a couple of years, when the so-called cineastes give up their reactionary stances and see the film for what it is and on its own terms; a very good post-apocalyptic film with striking imagery, a modest score (to call it overbearing is just wrong, and as for the claims of sentimentality, I don’t hear it, but if you want something to be negative…), and some excellent performances.
Who’s taking anything personally, Josh? I don’t even like the film THAT much (it’s a four star out of five – maybe top ten of 2009, definitely top twenty). But Den needs to look up the meaning of the word metaphysical (I wonder what kind of BA in philosophy he purportedly has) and, Zach, comparisons have nothing to do with quality or originality (subjective evaluations in any case) so your points there are irrelevant. As for themes, I think both deal with issues of alienation and how people make connections with others and have a kind of existentialist message at heart. Perhaps that’s too general.
As for the idea that the score is sentimental because it “underscores obvious emotional points in the film”, this is the silliest kind of circular logic since it doesn’t say anything about the music itself. It’s actually more of an issue of how music is used and quite frankly this is a criticism you can make of any film that doesn’t emotionally affect you but has some sort of musical accompaniment. Quite frankly, Hillcoat overuses the score so much (a valid criticism), I don’t see how you can say he’s using it to underscore obvious emotional points.
I know metaphysical Ari
even tho my BA is primarily in Gender Studies (Judith Butler, Andrea Dworkin)
maybe we saw different things in Motorama, to be fair I hadn’t seen it since I was 13
(Spoilers again)
I simply believe that including so much about the wife, who the father’s character obviously cares greatly about, asks the viewer to distract his/her focus too much from the relationship that matters (those who chose to fight to survive and look after one another). This is what ultimately takes away from the overall impact of the ending for me, when the father dies despite his struggle, and the the boy survives, partly due to the father’s willingness to fight for their survival.
And if we are simply comparing films based upon their genre, my argument would remain that Stalker is an incredible and original “metaphysical post-apocalyptic road movie” and The Road is a fairly bland, melodramatic, mediocre “metaphysical post-apocalyptic road movie.”
But this is obviously one film-watcher’s opinion.
Haha, Gender studies? And you have Updike as your avatar and you like Man Trouble? Dworkin must be turning in her grave.
I’ve also published pornographic short stories
but paradoxically so has dworkin.
it might not bother her much she was great friends with Allen Ginsberg at least until they had a falling out over Ginsberg membership in NAMBLA
Andy
I saw The Road a few weeks ago and I must say, it blew me away. I was on the verge of crying at the end. But it got no Golden Globe nominations and hasn’t really been mentioned as a top film of the year. I wanna know what everyone has to say, did you like it? Why is it getting no love?