Release Date: November 25, 2009

(out of 4)

As a master of playing characters with a good and evil duality, Viggo Mortensen is the only actor in the world that could have played the father in “The Road.” Although the father isn’t exactly evil, he is a good man that has disposed his better virtues because he believes it is better for his son’s and his own chances for survival. On an ash incinerated earth, a little boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) gradually exceeds the faith of his own doubting father and matures beyond his age. In a life that feels as if it is not worth living, the boy in his transcendence finds a connection between the embrace of what’s left of humankind and the dream of a better future.

The world catastrophe that has scorched the earth is undefined in both the novel by Cormac McCarthy and in the movie, but what remains is the constant panic of unavailable food and bands of cannibals and slave-herders. Something I closely observed is that two major grueling scenes in the book were left out of the movie, and if you’ve read the book you should be able to detect which are those two scenes. Such details are something I paid extra close attention to since McCarthy’s work is my favorite novel of the last ten years. It is a novel of unceasing adrenaline and immediacy, a novel of simple human poetry and complex earth-nature and destruction poetry.

What the filmmakers can’t (and no filmmaker can) is capture and translate an author’s idiosyncratic language, McCarthy’s symphony of words. Still, a movie can exist independently on its own terms and be successful. What John Hillcoat’s (“The Proposition”) movie has is some the best demolished and destroyed cities visuals you will find in an apocalyptic setting, some shots were staggeringly accurate to how I pictured them in the book. Moreover, the one weakness in McCarthy’s book was the final exchange by man and wife (as seen in flashback), but Mortensen and Charlize Theron bring amazing vitality to that scene.

Midway through the movie Robert Duvall makes a haggard, withered Old Man who is found on the road by father and son, who squabble over whether to divide their rations to feed this old man. First-timers to this story might find Duvall mesmerizing in his disintegrating but dignified appearance. Somehow though I find that Duvall is simply too intellectual and arch over the material – the same words in the dialogue are used in the book but Duvall is too in control of them, too “whole” of a man and not as withered as he appears. If you read McCarthy, it is one of the most haunting passages you will ever read in a novel.

Often the tone and manners of the movie disagrees with me. The visceral nature of the book made it feel like the most ultimate nightmare marathon of all-time, the endless ticking urgency that the characters must keep moving to stay alive. The movie has schmaltzy exchanges and show-stopping sentiment that is misused, and the music score is too pushy and tear-inducing.

Then there’s the matter of the boy (Smit-McPhee). He’s sticky sweet and unhardened. It didn’t help that he’s about 12 and the boy in the book sounds 9 (that’s my judgment call). I don’t know who I feel worst for: the actor who will be chopped down critically by viewers, or the viewers that will have to endure his performance. All I can say is that Viggo’s tremendous performance, the grinding down of his character, compensates all of the movie’s other faults.

On its own terms away from comparisons, “The Road” is very watchable. I shouldn’t guess audience reaction, and yet I offer theory that audiences will be very moved by the film. I say read the book first, but ultimately, everybody should acquaint themselves with this story. There is a reason why “The Road” is published in more languages worldwide than any modern book. As for me, I was constantly curious and intrigued every moment in the way in how it was going to be “adapted,” tickled and enticed by every choice and decision the director was making. I guess that’s what happens when it is my favorite book that I’ve read twice. I know it well enough to say that the end of the book is poetry and the end of the movie feels flat by comparison. There I go again after I had promised not to make anymore comparisons.