Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD is one of the greatest novels I’ve ever read. I don’t love it for the story, which is fairly ordinary. I also don’t love it for the characters, since they are barely sketched throughout.
No, I love it for its language. THE ROAD is narrative poetry. The words blot the page like random tears, each one quivering there alone waiting for discovery. Sentences run together in waves, or squat in dangling fragments, their shattered forms reflective of the apocalyptic setting in the novel. I would dare say that no novel ever written portrays desolation, despair, fear, and longing better than this one. It is so beautifully written that each page deserves to be displayed in an art gallery.
As you might imagine, my heart sank slightly when I heard of a film adaptation of this searing and singular work. When I had finished the novel, I secretly hoped that an adaptation might wait until I could somehow be involved in its production, because I felt I knew exactly how it should be done. Alas, as does often happen, opportunity is knocking while you’re still trying to get out of bed.
Rare news trickled out about the production over the months that followed. When John Hillcoat signed to direct it, I felt encouraged. However, I leaped with joy when I heard that Viggo Mortensen was chosen to play the man in the novel; he was my first choice as well. Even the disturbing news of an expanded role of the wife from the novel – to be played by top-billed Charlize Theron – didn’t dissuade my enthusiasm. It seemed that the entire production might pull of the impossible and bring McCarthy’s difficult and brooding prose to life.
But now I’ve seen the trailer. And it sucks. But even worse, it seems the film is desecrating everything true and beautiful in the source material.
In the book, the world-ending catastrophe was barely hinted at, leaving the details to the imagination – an asset long ago computer-rendered into obsolescence. Now we have ridiculous CGI tornadoes to stare at while we munch our popcorn, effectively turning McCarthy’s stark vision into a post-Apocalyptic version of TWISTER. I kept waiting to see the flying cow. Perhaps that will be in the director’s cut.
Even worse is the dilution of McCarthy’s stillborn world, a desolate place smothered with a blizzard of ash. The trailer makes this particular ROAD look like a slightly muddy hiking trail with pissed off locals. Gone are the vast, empty landscapes that McCarthy’s prose conjured with little effort, the kind that the Coen brothers captured when they adapted McCarthy’s NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. What a shame; film is able to bring immense landscapes to vivid life better than any other form of entertainment, yet Hillcoat was obviously not interested in useless visual devices like that.
From the trailer, it’s clear that Hillcoat and his overlords at the increasingly-irrelevant Weinstein Company are much more interested in making the next post-Apocalyptic zombie movie. The novel was a travelogue at the end of the world, and not much really happens besides unflinching death. Rather than make this a meaningful meditation on a desperate subject, Hillcoat and Co. have grafted chase scenes, explosions, and the cast of Mad Max into the story in an attempt to liven up McCarthy’s spare masterpiece. Additionally, they have expanded the wife’s role in the movie – in the book, she was barely mentioned – simply to artificially add emotional resonance to a story that was notable for its uncompromising coldness. Their motives are transparently shallow.
How cowardly of these filmmakers to take an uncompromising book like THE ROAD and turn it into a quagmire of cliches and action beats. Like recent Hollywood literary bastardizations like I AM LEGEND or HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, the people behind this film appear to have little understanding of the book’s appeal or message. Instead, they are apparently drowning the project with the same Hollywood nonsense we have seen millions of times since the first time when it bored the fuck out of us. I just don’t get it.
Hillcoat, you’re headed down the wrong road.
16 Comments
I confess I wasn’t excited when I heard they were making a film. I hate to sound inflexible, snobbish, or whatever, but this work is complete in itself and should not be made into a film. Some of the images in the preview match pretty closely how I imagined it when I read, and some do not. I’m afraid I just don’t have an open mind about this. I don’t even care if the film succeeds. I don’t want there to be a film at all.
@ Andrew – I know what you’re saying. I would have been happy without a film version. However, the imagery of the novel could have made a wordless dramatic masterpiece of moviemaking. Think 2001 or parts of FARGO. Imagine how powerful that could have been.
What a mised opportunity.
Its a 2:30 minute trailer. Should we not wait until we see the film before we make judgments? I mean Daredevil looked good in the trailers, and that turned out to be a steaming pile of shit.
@ Barn – I thought DAREDEVIL looked like shit in the trailers. And it was shit.
I understand what you’re saying. However, the people who gave you this trailer are already demonstrating that they do not understand the source material AT ALL. If you were creating a film out of this book, you would NEVER EVER EVER market it this way. If the trailer contains extraneous stuff simply for the sake of marketing, then they’re killing the film’s chances at the box office. If it DOES contain this material, then they’re killing their chances at the box office.
I thought Weinstein was a little smarter than this.
Trailers never understand the source material, they rarely understand the source material that they themselves are based on: the film (or rather they choose to not understand it). And marketing is the same, so many films are wrongly labelled in order to bring in a wider public. People who love the book will watch anyway, if only to scream about how much the film ruins it. The marketing guys need to bring in people who will pay their cash just to see Will Smith churn out a long list of cliched quips.
So I still hold a tiny flicker of hope that it is, as always, the vultures of capitalism rather than the filmmaker to blame, and that The Road might be unharmed…
Michael Edwards wrote: “People who love the book will watch anyway, if only to scream about how much the film ruins it.”
Not me. I shall neither watch it nor scream. I merely look at this as a very sad thing. I might, however, start a campaign to get people to read the book. It’s so brilliant.
One of the few positive things about adaptations (even bad ones) is they usually cause a massive renewed interest in the original book.
Stay strong Andrew! If more readers were like you studios might butcher fewer great books and give more original material a chance.
Im not gonna panic yet. This first trailer is obviously trying to get bums on seats opening weekend. Hillcoat even announced that the shit news reel isnt in the final movie, it was just a maketing tool insisted by the Weinsteins. Im gonna just chalk it down to a bad trailer for the moment.
I too was pretty disappointed by this generic looking trailer… but after reading The Road, I kinda figured this is where the inevitable movie adaptation was going. The book doesn’t have enough drama or action to carry a Hollywood blockbuster and audiences have been conditioned to think that the end-of-the-world is a violent “Mad Max” type of world.
I do think you’re reading too much into the trailer though, I bet they used all the most dramatic, action-packed moments, and the film will have moments of silence. The CNN weather footage at the beginning won’t be in it. And I kind of take that Charlize’s character is all in The Man’s mind, because all the outside shots are just of him and his son. I really dug Hillcoat’s last film The Proposition, so I’m willing to give this one a chance. Although I think I just came up with a filmmaker better suited Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James).
Hell, it’s just a stupid book. No reason to get so worked up over it.
Ya know, there are some people on the internet simply looking to get a rise out of people, regardless of whether they look like an ill-informed idiot in the process. JaySmack is that person.
I hate to say it, but I kind of love JaySmack for that. I wish I cared less about backlash on my ill-informed comments…
Well, maybe, Mr. Smack, but writing a novel is a ton of hard work. It ’s kind of like saying, “it’s just your stupid work, your stupid life, your stupid family, your stupid…” … no reason to get worked up over it.
@ Andrew:
Hm… that argument does not work with me. Maybe Cormac Mccarthy will actually like that movie. Who are we to pass Mccarthy’s judgement? Pass your own one, will you.
Frankly, this is one person’s graphic vision of another person’s written product. And even though Mccarthy’s writing was blissfully minimalistic, the situations he depicted will be pretty gruesome visually (One word: cannibals!). There is no way around that.
Personally, I hope that the directing will be minimalistic, as well. I cannot judge that from the trailer alone. I do believe in the talent attached to this film, though.
Phoenix: which of my arguments are you talking about?
I’m only speaking for myself. Why the hell would I try to speak for Mr. McCarthy?
It’s just a trailer, get over it. Trailers are very often edited to look much different than the real movie (ie. gran torino) and they surely shouldn’t be a reason to judge the movie. Especialy considering what Matt said.
BTW. You are getting recently more and more ranty. I don’t want to sound offensive but have a break as it gets iritating that the only reason for you to write something is that something pisses you off. Go and get some flower power man.