In the movie, the woman says to the boy that they had been following him and his father. In the book, the man that comes upon the boy asks “Where’s the man you were with?”, which I suppose implies that they had been following behind them.
While the book and movie are extremely depressing as to the plight that the characters must endure…the central message, IMHO, is that even when humanity is at its end, there is still hope for humanity.
Movie was very true to the book.
I just saw it, and I had not read the book or ever heard about the book or movie.
Most. Depressing. Movie. Ever.
The couple next to me left after the “horror house” scene. I briefly considered to join them.
Forgot:
What I found particularly unrealistic were the big fires they made whenever they camped. In a world full of cannibals, how long can you survive when you sleep every night next to a big fire?
Apparently the episodes of them sleeping in caves next to waterfalls were all dreams – are those the big fires you’re thinking of?
The book does make note of how careful the father and son have to be with campfires. I can see where it is unrealistic but I don’t know how the movie could have had “should or should I not light a fire” scenes without slowing down what is already a fairly slow paced movie.
That aside, I think the book is probably one of the best things I’ve ever read but the movie fell short of expectations. I didn’t care for the beetle scene or the woman with impossibly clean hair running from the cannibals but my chief complaint is Nick Cave’s music which, IMHO, completely blunted the emotional impact of the dialogue and action and was far better suited for a Lifetime movie.
Not only - this is really recurrent. They make a huge fire every night.
I have anther question: why does the man fill the bathtub when he first discovers that his neighborhood is burning (in a flashback with his wife very early in the movie). He seems to understand that the end is near but what is he doing?
Storing emergency drinking water. Folks in hurricane-prone areas know to do this before a storm hits in case potable water is not available afterwards.
Thanks - I didn’t think of that …
Enjoyed the movie, but it didn’t have the emotional punch of the book, probably because I had read the book. The book made me cry at the end and I don’t think another book has ever made me cry.
Dogs can alert people of danger at a greater distance than a human lookout. Guerilla soldiers often consider dogs worth their cost in food.
So I just got back from The Road, after finishing the book about a week ago.
I thought it was okay. It was pretty faithful to the book–perhaps a little bit too much so. It does hit pretty much every major plot point (with a few notable exceptions), but it wasn’t paced very well. It seems they were rushing so quickly from plot-point to plot-point, that you’re never able to full appreciate the situations the protagonists have found themselves in. (Perhaps ironically, my complaint with the book was that it took too long for stuff to start happening.) I almost wish the film had taken a page or two from Cast Away (stay with me here…) and shown more of the mundanity of every-day life; setting up camp, searching for food, etc. While watching the film, I never really felt that the characters had it that bad, particularly given that they find the bomb shelter pretty damn quickly.
I also felt the child was a weak-point. He wasn’t a bad actor, per se, but wasn’t particularly great either. I also had imagined the kid as being a few years younger in the book than as depicted in the movie.
To the movie’s credit, they improved the scene with the prisoners in the basement by having the main characters hide within the house itself at first, before escaping outside. That was a very tense and powerful scene–holding the gun to your own kid’s head…wow.
Strangely enough, I wasn’t that bothered by either the book or the movie. I mean, yeah, it has some dark content. But I guess I had been warned so much before reading the book that nothing could compare to what I had expected. And as such, I actually wish the film had gone even darker; the magnitude of their scerario wasn’t as well realized as it could have been.
Watched this yesterday in New Jersey. It’s still not playing anywhere near me so I decided to make the trek to the “Regal Marlboro Cinemas” in Morganville, about a 35 mile drive from my town. It was worth it!
Let me preface by saying I love end-of-times, apocalypse type of movies. Exploration of deserted landscapes, last man on earth, survival, hope, etc… I love all those aspects.
I had not read the novel (plan on doing so) but I did have some warning about the depressing nature of the movie. I actually had not even heard about it until “The Young Turks” did a review of it. They did kind of spoil the ending but it didn’t matter. In the end I didn’t think it was as much depressing but there’s a lot of anxiety involved. Every time he walks into a house or they sleep in a car you wonder if there’s someone nearby waiting to cause them harm. And this is usually the case. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m sure I can watch it again and enjoy it a bit more (though I think I’ll wait for the DVD).
Some questions I had throughout the movie:
-The obvious question of the cause of the apocalypse. Yes, it’s not relevant to the movie, but it’s still fun to theorize. The Old Man said people thought it was a con, and the warning signs were always there. The obvious inference here is Global Warming, but what about the earthquakes? What about a meteor? I don’t know how that would mess up the tectonic plates but that’s the best scenario I could think of.
-How long has earth been in this state? How long had they been on the road? When she gave birth, it looked like things were already messed up. I theorized they’d been on the road less than two years.
Running to get the book!
I have one more question: why has the family been following the man and his son? The only reason I can come up with is that they want a surviving young couple in order to save mankind. That seems to be a “noble” reason, but also an odd one. And, in this case, why not just approach the father and make the trek together?
The real reason, of course, is that the author/director wanted a happy ending for a depressing film, which makes this a less perfect movie, but perhaps a more enjoyable one. I went there completely unprepared and I was not … well … prepared to see this. As I said, I was not far from leaving the theatre.
The journey is obviously a metaphor for something . . . I read it as being about faith, at least on the topmost level - I presume they refer to his wife in the film?
What is the purpose of life without faith, faith in your God, or in your American dream, or in your genes passing on, that there is a better world south of wherever we are . Just keep going.
Alright people, I saw The Road. Here are my thoughts.
- I was expecting it to be a completely different movie. I knew that it was very bleak and depressing already, but I thought at least there would be more tension and more fleeing/fighting the bad guys. I was let down, in that regard. The first encounter with the freaky truck gang was really awesome and I liked it a lot - especially Garret Dillahunt, who I think is a serious contender for the most menacing actor currently working right now. (I was astonished to find that he portrayed Jesus Christ in a short-lived TV show.) I knew Dillahunt from his excellent work in Deadwood and I had hoped he was going to be a major character in The Road. I was disappointed when he got his head blown off after only about three minutes of screen time, though it was a very memorable three minutes.
I thought there would be more encounters with these roving marauders, but there weren’t. The scene with the cannibals in the farmhouse was excellent, but after that, I don’t think there was another moment of genuine tension in the entire movie.
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It makes no sense that humans would be alive but all animals would be gone. They expressed amazement at finding a tiny beetle, and later, a dog. This is absurd. Animals are a million times better at surviving things than humans are. Even if most animals were hunted to extinction for their meat, there would still be plenty of insects around.
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Likewise I didn’t understand exactly how the characters (other than the cannibals) were feeding themselves.
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How could a malnourished man strip naked, jump into the freezing ocean, swim out to a boat a few hundred feet offshore, and then swim back to shore? I am pretty sure this would result in a swift death in reality.
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The sound effects were excellent. The soundtrack was horrible.
Haven’t seen the movie yet - not sure if I will. But I read the novel all at once while stuck at the airport last year, and finished up on the plane. I never hugged my kids so hard before as I did when I landed.
I just saw the movie yesterday. I had no idea that the novel is from the guy who wrote No Country For Old Men. I was actually expecting an indy version of The Road Warrior, or at least Children of Men. I was pretty happy with what I got. I can’t decide if I want to read the book as I pretty much read a book for work every week (just the volume of work that I have).
Here are some random thoughts as I actually have work to do today:
The global apocalypse had to be a nucelar war and the warning signs were the nations gearing up for war. I figure the kid to be about 8, maybe 9, so the movie takes place about 10 years after all the destruction. Some combination of nuclear winter and whatever chemical attacks have caused the land to be infertile, therefore wild animals had nothing to eat and humans hunted them. Though as they got closer to the sea, I did see a bunch of wheat. If I find wheat anywhere in that world, I’m stopping and making a home (though I suppose this was probably a production flaw).
I found myself wondering why none of the good guys banded together. Can’t they all agree that having many people forage is a lot better than two or one persons foraging. They should have all one simple rule: don’t eat each other. With that rule in place, finding common ground to build a civilization should be pretty easy.
The road itself seemed like a pretty bad place to be. Only evil or bad things were found on the road. The Veteran and his family were careful to not travel the road. The road seemed to turn good into bad, i.e. the journey on the road was a journey of discovering evil, as I note as how bad the Man turned into, and was teaching his son to become one day.
Some questions that I would like answered please:
If it’s still snowing and that cold as far south as they were (it looked like South Carolina or even Georgia), how seriously fucked is the planet? (Well, I guess it does snow in Atlanta once every great while as I have been through one there once, but I’d like to show them what a real snow storm looks like.)
How bad were things in the book? Did they leave out any great details? I’d rather know than actually read about it in the book. That kind of stuff just depresses me. I couldn’t find any spoilers online.
I assumed when reading the book that the global apocalypse was a big meteor strike.
I don’t think I’ll see the movie…the book was quite enough.
Mostly you’re right, but we do get cold weather in the winter, and Atlanta did get a foot of snow in the Blizzard of '93.