The Road is an post apocalyptic film that centres on a father and son desperately trying to survive the apocalypse. The film is directed by John Hillcoat and was released in 2009. We watched this film as part of film club after school which is why I saw it because normally I tend to avoid these types of films. It was because of this that I had little enthusiasm to watch the film, however after watching it I actually enjoyed the film. The story was very compelling and kept me gripped to the screen throughout.
The acting throughout the film was superb. In the film the father is played by Viggo Mortensen and the child was played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. The acting feels very natural and enforces the realism that is shown throughout the rest of the film. In preparation for this post I read up about the film on IMBD and in the trivia section it says that both Mortenson and Smit-Mcphee did some obscure things in order to prepare for the roles, including eating crickets together. Mortenson even deliberately starved himself and would sleep in the same clothes at night, this lead to him once being thrown out of a store as the owners thought he was homeless. It was with this dedication and great acting on their behalf that their performance is entirely convincing.
The film visually looks brilliant which pays credit to the cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe. Every shot has a saturated look which reflects the doomed situation the characters appear to be in. Also there are many wide shots in the film that help to hint at the desolation that has happened to the earth and even though the film never mentions what happened to the earth to cause the apocalypse many of these shots depicting wide scale destruction help the audience to piece together what might have happened.
Overall the film is not the for the faint hearted as there are bleak themes of death, cannibalism and cataclysm. The problem I have is that I suppose I am a bit faint hearted. However the film is so well made in the sense of visuals and acting that it is still a compelling and engaging film to watch and I did enjoy watching it.
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