A few days late with this fantastic news due to the dizzying vortex of TIFF, but it bears repeating here. In what is perhaps the perfect storm of talent for this project, John Hillcoat, director of the bloody fantastic Aussie western The Proposition (a favorite around these parts) is to direct an adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy's post apocalyptic knock out of a novel, The Road. Viggo Mortensen (On a roll with two dynamite Cronenberg films) is set to star and the adaptation is being written by the screenwriter of the tragically underseen Enduring Love. This is the third Cormac McCarthy novel put up on the big screen (previously All the Pretty Horses and the forthcoming Coen Brother's No Country For Old Men), well that is if it comes out before Ridley Scott's version of Blood Meridian. Potentially good times (certainly sky-high expectations) like ahead as these two novels are considered the best works of the author (on a personal note, The Road is the best novel I've read in years). The Road is such a bleak story told in such a sparse manner, that it should be fascinating to see how Hillcoat visualizes the story and interesting to see how much of the mainstream embraces something so bleakly beautiful.
Great heads-up, Kurt! I, too, am looking forward to this, now that I have NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN under my belt.
Hey Mike. We never met this year at TIFF! oi! you around on saturday?
Unbelievable... What is basically an unfilmable novel that is so grim-- as if the entire hope and expectation of humanity had been wrung out of it like an old wash cloth-- will be brought to the big screen.
Well, excuse me for saying this, but some books do not belong on the big screen. Let's be honest for a second, this was optioned and will be developed entirely under the expectation of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN's potential success without a moment's thought to what the book is actually about. Let's hear it for pure business minded greed!
Even if, under some sort of bit of luck and genius the film IS faithful to the novel, why should anyone want to watch this? The novel isn't meant to be entertainment (in my mind-- and, of course, keep in mind this is my opinion only); it's meant to be a cautionary tale written by a brilliant author in his autumn years.
I hope this gets caught in turn around and never made.
Nicholas, I disagree, nothing wrong with an arty type adaptation of the material. By all rights, The Proposition should not have worked as well as it did, but it was bleak magic. I've got super high expectations and really want to see this on the big screen.
Unrelated, but it just popped into my brain. There could be the empty calorie multiplex version is someone adapted Steven King's The Gunslinger. That would make a batter bleak-blockbuster than THE ROAD.
I want a an arthouse version of THE ROAD, and Hillcoat looks like exactly the right choice. Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing Gus Van Sant, Terrance Mallick or Andrei Zvyagintsev take a crack at it. Or really a gonzo choice would be Tsai Ming-Liang
I bought the Road a while ago and still have to read it (like that guy said in predator "I haven't got time to read!"...o no, that's a wrong quote :-)) the book sounds great and a movie sounds great as well. I think the (post-)apocalypse genre is very cinematic, so I don't see any problems translating it to the screen.
What Kurt said. So what if the reasoning behind turning "The Road" is based on "pure business minded greed"? That doesn't mean that the movie can't be great, can't be a good and faithful to the book.
And yes, the book is exceedingly grim, but it's also beautiful and poignant, and in a certain way, quite uplifting. After all, the central theme of the book is the love the father and the son have for eachother, and how that carries them through such a bleak existence.
I suppose that I'm expecting something along the lines of Michael Haneke’s "Time Of The Wolf" -- another bleak story set in a post-apocalyptic world that delves deeply into the worst sides of human nature, as well as highlighting some of the best.
On a related (and hilarious) note...
http://mcsweeneys.net/2007/8/24molyneux.html
i loved No Country For Old Men and finished the book in record time. but i couldn't get past the first few pages of The Road. but friends have been trying to convince me that i should give it another go. i'm really hesitant. if a book doesn't grab my by page 3, it's a no-go.
Wow, someone else who loved TIME OF THE WOLF! Most people and critics seem to absolutely hate it but I thought it was a brilliant and haunting and unique look at the end of the world. One of Haneke's best films in my opinion and one of the very few of his films I can actually rewatch.
It's that scene with the Barn, once I hit that whole segment, I knew I was watching something special and primal. More emotional than Haneke's work usualy is. The title reference to Bergman is apt, that whole segment felt so much like older Bergman in dark colour.