Posts Tagged ‘the road’

I read the vast majority of The Road last summer whilst travelling the length of the 171 bus route from Catford to Holborn and back. It isn’t that I’m a particularly fast reader; it’s just that Cormac McCarthy’s sparse prose is nothing if not economic. The best thing about The Road as a novel is how much vivid detail McCarthy conjures with so few words. The grey, ruined America of the book is painted in your mind almost from nowhere. And one of the great things about John Hillcoat’s fine adaptation is how well this world is visualised on screen. One wouldn’t be surprised if the Australian director had actually scorched significant bits of countryside to recreate McCarthy’s unnamed disaster.

For the uninitiated, The Road concerns an anonymous Man and his Young Boy travelling south across a post-apocalyptic countryside in search of whatever they can find to keep them alive. A predictably intense Viggo Mortensen and equally impressive Kodi Smit-McPhee star as the two survivors. I was lucky enough to be invited to a screening hosted by the Barbican which was followed by a Q&A with Hillcoat. Hillcoat was clearly in awe of his source material but much to my delight was unafraid to take small liberties with the text, subtly chopping and changing it to suit its new medium. What he has made remains faithful to the novel but also stands on its own two feet as a separate and significant entity.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s minimalist score stirs and impresses; Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography is both daunting and beautiful despite the intentionally coarse and unpleasant looks of the production design; and Hillcoat masterfully paces the film in such a way that its 111 minute duration seems to fly by. Also commendable is the constant atmosphere of menace – at any moment you feel things could go terribly wrong for the duo.

Thankfully there are very few negative comments to be made about the film. The sparing use of a voiceover narration works, but only just and some may find the few flashback sequences in the film slightly clunky. Others still may find the film relentlessly morbid, though for my money, Hillcoat has captured the untainted love between man and his son that provides hope for them in a brutally hopeless world.

The much delayed release of The Road seems clearly engineered to provide it with a good run during the forthcoming awards season, its producers no doubt hoping to replicate the success of McCarthy’s previously adapted work, No Country for Old Men (Hillcoat claimed that he was satisfied with the film’s success already as it had impressed the esteemed author). The Road has also arrived in the middle of a spate of much sillier apocalypse movies – 2012, Carriers and the forthcoming Book of Eli and Legion (which features mankind’s destruction via the medium of heaven-sent machine gun wielding angels – seriously). Where one postulates The Road will stand out from these is in its reality-based, post-9/11 and post-Katrina influenced realism, which delivers a gut punch on a much more personal level.

The London Film Festival kicks off on 14^th October, during which a multitude of brand new films will be showing at cinemas across the capital. Screen takes a look at potential highlights…

An Education

Adapted from The Guardian journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir by Nick Hornby, this feature stars hotly-tipped newcomer Carey Mulligan as Jenny, a bright girl from a lower middle class family who is seduced by Peter Sarsgaard’s older man, David. Enticed by the fine things in life that David can provide for her, only school teachers (Emma Thompson and Olivia Williams) sense the danger Jenny may be entering.

The Road

Cormac McCarthy’s second scintillating novel to be made into a film, The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a nameless survivor of a nameless apocalypse who is travelling across a scorched America with his young son. If director John Hillcoat has managed to convey even a fraction of the book’s grim vision, we could be on to a winner. Last showing is this afternoon though so hurry!

A Serious Man

The latest film from the Coen Brothers sees the nice and normal world of Larry Gopnik fall apart around him as he tries to maintain his virtuous existence. Some feel that Burn After Reading was a misfire after the much lauded No Country For Old Men; let’s hope A Serious Man can restore their faith in the ever surprising Coen’s catalogue.

Balibo

Balibo is based on the true story of five Australian journos who were killed whilst covering the 1975 genocide in East Timor (for more about that search YouTube for Noam Chomsky’s excellent documentary, Manufacturing Consent). The film has been described as tense, thrilling and affecting and should highlight a relatively little know 20^th century tragedy.

Bunny and the Bull

The producers of this have described it as ‘Withnail & I for the mentally ill’. It boasts Paul King, director of the Mighty Boosh at its helm as well as stars Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt. It will probably be rather funny then. It concerns the tale of two friends who’ve had a trip around Europe so tumultuous; it’s left one of them house-bound for two months. Fielding and Barratt play an ex-matador and a tramp that the couple encounter on their trip. Expect surrealism.

American: The Bill Hicks Story

An inventive documentary from two UK filmmakers, American: The Bill Hicks Story combines stand-up footage, testimonies from close family members and animation techniques to tell the tale of one of the greatest comedians ever to grace a stage. Hick’s performances were audacious displays of articulate rage, unrelenting compassion and machete-sharp wit. Hopefully, the film will capture some of this and serve as a fitting memorial to the sadly missed stand-up.

The Scouting Book for Boys

Thomas Turgoose, the breakout star of Shane Meadow’s tour de force, This Is England, takes the lead as David in this compelling drama about two childhood friends who are separated when one goes missing. Apparently mixing the anxieties of teen-hood with the idylls of childhood in the summertime, this could be the film that turns Turgoose into a household name.

Metropia

“Downbeat animated sci-fi noir” describes this Scandinavian curiosity. Roger lives in a dystopian vision of the future in which all of Europe is connected by subterranean transport links and constantly monitored by CCTV and big corporations. Also, he’s hearing voices in his head. Is someone trying to control him? Who? And why? Or is he just mental? Sounds intriguing!

Women Without Men

Iranian director/artist Shirin Neshat adapts Shahrunsh Parsipar’s banned (in Iran) novel, in which we follow the stories of four women during the time of the 1953 coup (backed by us western buggers) in which Iran’s democratically elected PM was deposed by the shah. A heady mix of political, social, sexual and religious issues are discussed in this beautifully shot film.

Also showing at the festival are showcases of several short films, grouped by theme. ‘The Gothic and The Grotesque’, for example collects numerous macabre and creepy shorts including Little Red Hoodie, an update of a familiar Grimm tale and Touch of Red, a depiction of Edgar Allen Poe as he writes The Fall of the House of Usher. The ‘Landscape as Character’ set also contains many potential gems, such as A Whore and a Chick which features a cycling chicken man and John Wayne Hated Horses, about a father and son’s views on machismo.

There’s also the secret screening, in which the audience doesn’t know what they’re going to watch until the lights go out. In the past, punters have been treated to No Country For Old Men and The Wrestler. My money’s on Terry Gilliam and the late Heath Ledger’s The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

For more information, screening times and locations and tickets, visit www.bfi.org.uk/lff.