Yet Another Hollywood Fuck-Up

Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD is one of the greatest novels I've ever read. I don't love it for the story, which is fairly ordinary. I also don't love it for the characters, since they are barely sketched throughout. No, I love it for its language. THE ROAD is narrative poetry. The words blot the page like random tears, each one quivering there alone waiting for discovery. Sentences run together in waves, or squat in dangling fragments, their shattered forms reflective of the apocalyptic setting in the novel. I would dare say that no novel ever written portrays desolation, despair, fear, and longing better than this one. It is so beautifully written that each page deserves to be displayed in an art gallery. As you might imagine, my heart sank slightly when I heard of a film adaptation of this searing and singular work. When I had finished the novel, I secretly hoped that an adaptation might wait until I could somehow be involved in its production, because I felt I knew exactly how it should be done. Alas, as does often happen, opportunity is knocking while you're still trying to get out of bed. Rare news trickled out about the production over the months that followed. When John Hillcoat signed to direct it, I felt encouraged. However, I leaped with joy when I heard that Viggo Mortensen was chosen to play the man in the novel; he was my first choice as well. Even the disturbing news of an expanded role of the wife from the novel - to be played by top-billed Charlize Theron - didn't dissuade my enthusiasm. It seemed that the entire production might pull of the impossible and bring McCarthy's difficult and brooding prose to life. But now I've seen the trailer. And it sucks. But even worse, it seems the film is desecrating everything true and beautiful in the source material. In the book, the world-ending catastrophe was barely hinted at, leaving the details to the imagination - an asset long ago computer-rendered into obsolescence. Now we have ridiculous CGI tornadoes to stare at while we munch our popcorn, effectively turning McCarthy's stark vision into a post-Apocalyptic version of TWISTER. I kept waiting to see the flying cow. Perhaps that will be in the director's cut. Even worse is the dilution of McCarthy's stillborn world, a desolate place smothered with a blizzard of ash. The trailer makes this particular ROAD look like a slightly muddy hiking trail with pissed off locals. Gone are the vast, empty landscapes that McCarthy's prose conjured with little effort, the kind that the Coen brothers captured when they adapted McCarthy's NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. What a shame; film is able to bring immense landscapes to vivid life better than any other form of entertainment, yet Hillcoat was obviously not interested in useless visual devices like that. From the trailer, it's clear that Hillcoat and his overlords at the increasingly-irrelevant Weinstein Company are much more interested in making the next post-Apocalyptic zombie movie. The novel was a travelogue at the end of the world, and not much really happens besides unflinching death. Rather than make this a meaningful meditation on a desperate subject, Hillcoat and Co. have grafted chase scenes, explosions, and the cast of Mad Max into the story in an attempt to liven up McCarthy's spare masterpiece. Additionally, they have expanded the wife's role in the movie - in the book, she was barely mentioned - simply to artificially add emotional resonance to a story that was notable for its uncompromising coldness. Their motives are transparently shallow. How cowardly of these filmmakers to take an uncompromising book like THE ROAD and turn it into a quagmire of cliches and action beats. Like recent Hollywood literary bastardizations like I AM LEGEND or HITCHHIKER'SGUIDE TO THE GALAXY, the people behind this film appear to have little understanding of the book's appeal or message. Instead, they are apparently drowning the project with the same Hollywood nonsense we have seen millions of times since the first time when it bored the fuck out of us. I just don't get it. Hillcoat, you're headed down the wrong road.