The Road reviewed

The Road is another successful film adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy book (the other being No Country For Old Men). It is set in a post apocalyptic and desolate America, and centres on the journey of a father and son walking the road south to the coast where they hope to find a warmer climate and better life. Along the way they struggle to survive and keep that hope alive. The film, like life, is a hard slog: intense, dark and bleak but unable to overwhelm the love between father and son, called simply Man and Boy. This relationship is portrayed in a tender and very moving way, thanks largely to a brilliant joint performance by Viggo Mortensen as Man and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Boy. I will be surprised if they are not both nominated for an Oscar. Man is a loving and devoted father, outside that relationship he is pragmatic and cautious which is understandable in the circumstances. It's a fine line to tread, between survival and protection of a loved one and doing all that necessary to achieve that. Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce and Charlize Theron provide an impressive supporting cast but Mortensen and Smit-McPhee are the powerful anchor of the film. They make the bleak and hard slog worthwhile. The film is about the truimph of the human spirit in terrible conditions, the courage to perserve humanity in oneself but the most telling theme is really about the most important thing in this life, namely the love that exists in a relationship. The fact that the landscape is so bleak and harsh, and the struggles of Man and Boy so painful and hard, only highlights the importance of this gift more powerfully. 8/10.