Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen, Academy Award winners Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and 12-year-old Kodi Smit McPhee star in the big-screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Road.”
Take a look at these five clips from the movie directed by John Hillcoat from a script by Joe Penhall, which is showing at Telluride this weekend and at Venice Film Festival In Competition.
This is a story of a man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and, when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing: just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food and each other.
After delaying the film for more than a year, “The Road” is scheduled to hit theaters on October 16th 2009.
“The Road” Clip #1
“The Road” Clip #2
“The Road” Clip #3
“The Road” Clip #4
“The Road” Clip #5
thanks for the trailers.
eventually, the whole movie will be online
before it reaches the theaters. although i’ve
waited 3 years for this movie (after reading
the book), the waiting is over. who knows?
maybe ovguide.com will post it this month.
my take on the trailers:
1. the outside is not DARK enough. of course,
if it was…nothing to see, just like the book.
2. everyone, except the captives, are Too Well Fed.
3. finally, in the book, the fires burned everything.
no tree leaves on the ground. just an arbor of
slick skeletons standing above ash that shifts
with the seasons and the presence of man.
I agree with you on your first two points, but I just read the book and there are plenty of leaves on the ground. The fires were only in specific areas, where he talks about the macadam being too hot to walk on, cracked and broken, and people melted in the streets etc. Other places were devastated by winds, putting debris like house roofs and boats in the road. There were no fires there.
If you’d like specific references, the first clip above is of the scene in the book where they run from the house (they do not go upstairs) and McCarthy describes the place where they stop, which is covered in leaves.
At another point in the book, they wait on a hill while men and a pregnant woman pass, then they catch up to them in the morning and sneak around their camp. “The leaves were soft from the recent rains and
quiet underfoot.” is the exact line.
There is ash and snow and fire, but McCarthy talks about the leaves that are there too. Just not as much as the ash.
This and the book are both things of beauty …