I'll Watch Anything

For all the praise soon to be heaped upon The Road, make no mistake: it will also be one of the hardest films of the year to watch. It is certainly not for the faint of heart; suicide, cannibalism, nudity, limb-chopping, and soul-crushing depression are but a few troublesome human vices recurring throughout. However, there are moments of profound tenderness, introspection, and humanity which support the more extreme tendencies. A stupendous script and some fantastic acting all around bring the desolate world of the suffocating, postapocalyptic America boldly to life – and while the tragedy which destroys nearly all life on the planet is never explained, the taut narrative never misses a beat and never dilutes, compromises, or apologizes for the novel’s ambiguous setting. The film gets under your skin and hypnotizes with its powerful, plaintive message, and doesn’t let go until the final moments with a jarring, provocative ending.

The film is a dramatization of the acclaimed Cormack McCarthy novel of the same name; one of the biggest challenges, and clearest successes, is the translation of his prose into sight and sound. There are first-person voiceovers which might turn some off, but the few passages are chosen for both brevity and impact, and Mortensen’s delivery does the book justice. The real challenge, though, is in the construction of the spaces described so minimally in the novel; McCarthy’s prose is as bleak as his landscapes, and with a few words the pictures he can create are strikingly evocative. The incredible production values transform these descriptions into cinematic gold, mirroring the author’s characteristic minimalism and economy of word magnificently. This is one of the few films that can make beauty out of destruction, and not in the grand, spectacular effects ala Day After Tomorrow, but in the fragile shadows and reflections playing off a winter’s snow, a tree turned to soot, or a city line devastated and empty, overlooking the land like a forgotten king. The present day, pictured as a lush and vibrant garden, gives way in the first moments of the film to a devastating palette of grey and black. Desolate, bleak, and foreboding, the land around the characters penetrates deep into their psyche, and ours as well, nearly extinguishing all hope of life. Sitting in the theater, I frequently found myself wishing I could pause the film briefly to study every detail of some truly remarkable cinematography; it dwarfs you, like an Ansel Adams print, placing the characters in the center of the remaining world, and simultaneously marginalized and forgotten in the corners.

For the film is truly about people, as much as those absent in the unexplained global disaster as those present on screen. Some fantastic acting by the lead pair, Mortensen and son (newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee) are undoubtedly the keys to success; their relationship resonates with profound love and the desire to survive, at all costs. Cameos by some surprisingly made-up stars, including Robert Duval and Guy Pierce, bring even minor roles believably into this surpassing narrative. Duval’s character, in particular, is intriguing, asking: “What would you do if you were the last man on earth?” and the implication is clear: devoid of people, the world (for all its terrible beauty and marvelous creatures) is just a shell, a lonely space more like an open-ended prison than a paradise. The film asks us to reflect on what motivates us, be it people, pure animal survival, or the trappings of culture we cling to without realizing it.

[More review, and edits, to come... I'm a little pressed for time]

This entry was posted on September 4, 2009 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Festival/Event, JAGP, Review with tags Drama, Post-Apocalyptic, See It Now, Telluride. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.