In a dangerous post-apocalyptic world, an ailing father defends his son as they slowly travel to the sea.In a dangerous post-apocalyptic world, an ailing father defends his son as they slowly travel to the sea.In a dangerous post-apocalyptic world, an ailing father defends his son as they slowly travel to the sea.
- Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award
- 5 wins & 34 nominations total
Jeremy Ambler
- Man In Cellar #1
- (uncredited)
Aaron Bernard
- Militant
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaTo live the role, Viggo Mortensen would sleep in his clothes and deliberately starve himself. At one point, he was thrown out of a shop in Pittsburgh, because they thought he was a homeless man.
- GoofsThe "current" portion of the movie takes place approximately 7-8 years after the "disaster" happened that caused all plant life to die off. If all plant life had died off, there would be no dry grass shooting from the soil, nor dead grass lying on the ground especially with all the weather turmoil happening around. All leaves and dried grass would have decomposed in that amount of time. Furthermore, trees would not have dried leaves hanging from the branches.
- Crazy creditsOver the end credits, we hear the sounds of children playing. What the world must have been like in happier times.
- ConnectionsFeatured in At the Movies: Venice Film Festival 2009 (2009)
- SoundtracksSonata for Violin and Harpsichord No. 3 in E Major: Adagio Ma Non Tanto
Written by Johann Sebastian Bach (as J.S. Bach)
Arranged by Ryan Franks
Performed by Ryan Franks & Harry Scorzo
Courtesy of Crucial Music Corporation
Featured review
Bleaker than the novel!
"We are not gonna quit. We are gonna survive this." The Man
Survival is the ultimate motif of the Cormack McCarthy Pulitzer The Road. And so too is the film adaptation, faithful to the original while adding what McCarthy can't—the actualization of a landscape barren of life and humans barren of humanity. Then again, the film's failure is being even bleaker than the source, a testimony to the power of the imagination.
Except for a father (Viggo Mortensen) and young son (Kodi Smit-Mcphee), who represents the hope of the human race as the story assumes the trappings of allegorical, post-apocalyptic literature and film where the desolate outside mirrors the lonely inside of the humans, not all of whom are willing to carry on the good fight. Suicide becomes a leitmotif, a companion to hope as if out of a Bergman film, an escape from the horrible aftermath of devastation never explained. So much the better because allegorically there are numerous ways for us to ruin our earth and our spirits. Not the least of which could be nuclear or cannibal; the former does not make an appearance while the latter is omnipresent.
Director John Hillcoat has emphasized more than McCarthy the role, by flashback, of the wife/mother (Charlize Theron), but overall he has taken dialogue directly from the novel and stayed true to the bleak landscape where the sun doesn't shine and the trees fall intermittently like humans giving up the ghost.
The gray tones and beat up humans are like those in most post- apocalyptic films; however, as in Children of Men to a lesser extent, the focus is on how to survive, not even how to avoid death. In both cases, it's up to the young ones to "carry a fire' (the mantra of The Road), itself a metaphor for the strength to survive:
"Everything depends on reaching the coast. I told you I would do whatever it takes." The Man
Survival is the ultimate motif of the Cormack McCarthy Pulitzer The Road. And so too is the film adaptation, faithful to the original while adding what McCarthy can't—the actualization of a landscape barren of life and humans barren of humanity. Then again, the film's failure is being even bleaker than the source, a testimony to the power of the imagination.
Except for a father (Viggo Mortensen) and young son (Kodi Smit-Mcphee), who represents the hope of the human race as the story assumes the trappings of allegorical, post-apocalyptic literature and film where the desolate outside mirrors the lonely inside of the humans, not all of whom are willing to carry on the good fight. Suicide becomes a leitmotif, a companion to hope as if out of a Bergman film, an escape from the horrible aftermath of devastation never explained. So much the better because allegorically there are numerous ways for us to ruin our earth and our spirits. Not the least of which could be nuclear or cannibal; the former does not make an appearance while the latter is omnipresent.
Director John Hillcoat has emphasized more than McCarthy the role, by flashback, of the wife/mother (Charlize Theron), but overall he has taken dialogue directly from the novel and stayed true to the bleak landscape where the sun doesn't shine and the trees fall intermittently like humans giving up the ghost.
The gray tones and beat up humans are like those in most post- apocalyptic films; however, as in Children of Men to a lesser extent, the focus is on how to survive, not even how to avoid death. In both cases, it's up to the young ones to "carry a fire' (the mantra of The Road), itself a metaphor for the strength to survive:
"Everything depends on reaching the coast. I told you I would do whatever it takes." The Man
Helpful•10282
- JohnDeSando
- Nov 10, 2009
- Permalink
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $25,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $8,117,000
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $1,502,231
- Nov 29, 2009
- Gross worldwide
- $27,639,579
- Runtime1 hour 51 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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