15 Years Later, This Masterpiece With LoTR Star Is Still the Best Sci-Fi Thriller Ever Made
The most realistic post-apocalyptic movie you will ever see.
Fallout, Mad Max, and the like have created an image of the post-apocalyptic world in the public consciousness: wastelands, bunkers, evil mutants, criminals-sectarians. We are promised a cruel but interesting world – and of course they deceive us. These are all fantasies, almost dreams, of how we would like to see the post-apocalypse.
The Road Is One of the Most Realistic Takes on the Post-Apocalypse
Cormac McCarthy's book The Road and its film adaptation by director John Hillcoat remind us what it will really be like. The post-apocalypse is grayness, routine and hopelessness. The post-apocalypse will make us look like homeless people, not cool warriors.
When the world goes down, people will not be running around in power armor shooting mutants. They will be looking for food and gnawing at each other's throats for a tin can or a good jacket. Every bullet and gallon of gasoline will have to be saved because there is no one to make new ones.
A cellar full of old canned goods will be the greatest treasure, and a pack of expired medicine will be a gift from heaven. Because the chances of dying of hunger or disease are much higher than being killed by super mutants.
What Is The Road About?
This is a brutal and metaphorical story about a nameless father and son walking south through a parched, lifeless and cold land.
Trees fall, cannibals try to eat them, and every encounter with other people can turn into a disaster – but they keep going, cherishing the hope that, far away, things might be a little better.
The Road Is as Grounded as Possible
The Road is, in a sense, the least fantastical movie about the world after the end of the world. There is only one fantastic assumption, and even that is kept in the background. We are not really told what kind of apocalypse has happened. It is not a war or an epidemic, but something abstract and insurmountable.
But at the beginning of the movie, humanity is on the verge of extinction. And not only humanity – the apocalypse could not help but affect all living things.
Nature has not been purified, and the consequences of the catastrophe are no less terrible than nature itself. For example, the creators did not forget about the fires that will inevitably break out when thousands of houses and businesses are left unattended.
The Film Manages to Remain an Intriguing Road Movie
It cannot be said that The Road is without adventure. The more time that passes from the beginning to the end, the darker and crazier the world becomes. People turn into animals without any radiation. There are also cannibals who keep their captives like cattle.
Still, both the book and the movie are psychological dramas, not just survival stories. Your main enemy in the post-apocalyptic world is yourself. You cannot resist depression, you lose the will to live, and you destroy yourself.
You can imagine yourself in Fallout, playing the cool guy – and die from carelessness. Or you can find a purpose for yourself and raise a baby who has never seen a normal life, a human being, not a small animal.