Esquire‘s Tom Chiarella got an early glance at the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic gnasher The Road, and it is by his account as bleak and haunted as the novel:
You should see it for the simplest of reasons: Because it is a good story. Not because it may be important. Not because it is unforgettable, unyielding. Not because it horrifies. Not because the score is creepily spiritual. Not because it is littered with small lines of dialogue you will remember later. Not because it contains warnings against our own demise. All of that is so. Don’t see it just because you loved the book. The movie stands alone. Go see it because it’s two small people set against the ugly backdrop of the world undone. A story without guarantees. In every moment — even the last one — you’ll want to know what happens next, even if you can hardly stand to look. Because The Road is a story about the persistence of love between a father and a son, and in that way it’s more like a remake of The Godfather than some echo of I Am Legend.
i saw this two weeks ago at an advance screening in Manhattan. it was really good. very dark, bleak, and haunting. definitely waiting to see the final finished version as some of the effects were not complete. they did a very nice with this adaptation.
A phenomenal book, very moving. I’m anticipating the movie; and recommend reading the book before it comes out.
Hope the movie is better than the book. I can’t recall a book that I was more angry at after having read it. What a piece of crap masquerading as “literature”. I am at a complete loss as to why anyone thinks this book is brilliant, or any of the other, numerous gushing descriptions that have been written about it.
The whole thing is quite odd to me, in that I _have_ an attention span, love good literature of all kinds, don’t need post-apocalyptic zombies or pseudo-religious BS in my end-of-world stories, and love father/son stories, but I despised this book.
“it’s more like a remake of The Godfather than some echo of I Am Legend.”
…The son wakes up in the tent to find a horse’s head in his sleeping bag next to him.
“Dad! You got us breakfast!”
I love it when I’m trying, very hard, to procrastinate on work for my professor (short story rewrite, etc.) and then his name shows up on Boing Boing like he’s reaching through the computer to tell me, “Do your damn work.”
On the other hand, he has good taste. I’m looking forward to the movie.