Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD courtesy of John Hillcoat and starring Viggo Mortensen

Reader Comments

1. Opus 09/13/2007 @ 7:18pm

   I’m very excited about this. I finished reading “The Road” last week—it’s a fantastic novel, and the whole time, I found myself wondering how certain scenes might look on the silver screen. Hillcoat is a great choice—“The Proposition” treads similar territory, visually and thematically—as is Viggo.

2. Michael Guillen 09/13/2007 @ 7:32pm

   Great heads-up, Kurt!  I, too, am looking forward to this, now that I have NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN under my belt.

3. Kurt Halfyard 09/13/2007 @ 7:46pm

   Hey Mike.  We never met this year at TIFF!  oi!  you around on saturday?

4. Nicholas Rucka 09/13/2007 @ 9:21pm

   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.

5. Kurt Halfyard 09/13/2007 @ 11:41pm

   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

6. petcor80 09/14/2007 @ 1:04am

   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.

7. Opus 09/14/2007 @ 6:32am

   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.

8. Caterpillar 09/14/2007 @ 6:51am

   Grim, hopeless, downbeat, nihilistic… Hell yeah, that’s the only kind of entertainment I pay for at the box office. There will always be romantic comedies for those with different tastes. By the way, I believe the main reason THE ROAD was optioned and fast tracked is that the author won some little price of some kind for it.

9. Opus 09/14/2007 @ 7:28am

   On a related (and hilarious) note…

   http://mcsweeneys.net/2007/8/24molyneux.html

10. The Visitor 09/14/2007 @ 8:32am

    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.

11. Kurt Halfyard 09/14/2007 @ 12:44pm

    Haneke’s Time of the Wolf was one of my favorites films of a few years ago, if the Road approaches that then...WOW!

    (on the mcsweeneys thing, hilarious even before i started reading, the concept alone is certainly worthy of an SCTV sketch!)

12. Caterpillar 09/14/2007 @ 1:15pm

    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.

13. Kurt Halfyard 09/14/2007 @ 1:42pm

    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.

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