An unspecified catastrophe has destroyed the planet: vegetation is dying and the ash from frequent fires covers everything and everyone. Humanity seems doomed to extinction and is forced to move continuously in search of food and water, now scarce. A father and son travel towards the sea with the hope of a way of salvation from a world in rapid ruin. How many times in recent years has the world been seen destroyed in cinema? Rhetorical question. Many. Natural apocalypses in disaster films, deadly viruses that mutate/kill/resurrect humans and animals in horror and science fiction films... there has been everything and it is known, when the vase is full, it takes just a drop to make it overflow. But with "The Road" we are really safe - in the broad sense, obviously - because John Hillcoat has decided to take a "road" different from the usual, more reflective and profound, making what could be considered the best film of the season. The basis of everything lies in a novel, "The Road", written by Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "No Country for Old Men" (from which the Coen brothers made an equally excellent film), so we are dealing with renowned material from which you either draw a colossal flop or a top-notch product. Fortunately, Hillcoat's film belongs to this second category and despite some purists of the printed word possibly turning up their noses, the result on film is really remarkable. Let's start by saying that "The Road" is not the typical film that deals with the theme of the apocalypse to which Hollywood has accustomed us, nothing of exhibited catastrophism, nothing of special effects nor spectacular scenes and action galore. None of that, but slow rhythms - very slow, you have been warned! - and the catalysis of interest on the psychologies of the characters and the human relationships that are created. John Hillcoat, who in the past has tackled the strange western/splatter "The Proposition - The Proposal", together with screenwriter Joe Penhall ("Fatal Love") have brought to the stage a dark and no-way-out world on which predominate sentiments of cosmic negativism rarely exhibited on the big screen. What strikes most about this film, in fact, is the oppressive and funereal atmosphere that is breathed throughout its duration: the journey of two souls in pain towards a future even greyer than the clouds loaded with ash that fill the images. The splendid desaturated photography, bordering on black and white, by Javier Aguirresarobe contributes enormously to the creation of the right atmosphere, but the suggestive sets are not far behind, immersing our two characters in desolate lands filled with ash and soot, arid paths, forests populated by dry shrubs that collapse at the mere glance, destroyed villages and ruins of a civilization now very distant. In this sad and desolate setting move father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), physically and mentally tried by hunger and fatigue, pushed to go on only thanks to the memory of a wife/mother who is no longer there (Charlize Theron) and the awareness of being "good" in a society of "bad", of being bearers of that fire which for them is a synonym of hope. The depth and tenderness with which the father-son relationship is described is exemplary; the psychology of the two characters, also thanks to the flashbacks of a world that no longer exists, is excellently represented and entirely credible. Hillcoat tells us about vital characters in a dying world (the continuous struggle for survival) and dying characters in an alien world (the father's lessons to the son on how to use the gun with the only two bullets remaining to commit suicide) who must guard against the dying nature and the aggressiveness of their peers that drives them to hunting expeditions aimed at cannibalism and episodes of looting dictated by desperation. A touching and at the same time annihilating story for a film really capable of moving. "The Road" nevertheless also offers an excellent reason to approach it to horror, namely the unsettling scene in the cannibals' lair, in which the two protagonists discover a terrible scenario made of travelers kept as livestock to be slaughtered. Viggo Mortensen's acting is immense, perhaps we are facing his best performance ever - and Mortensen is a skilled actor in most of his films - as well as the participation of a nearly unrecognizable Robert Duvall in the role of the hungry traveler. In a conventional, though not disdainful, manner, the interpretation of young McPhee. The advice is not to miss this film, a real journey that the viewer undertakes together with the characters. A slow pilgrimage that cannot leave one indifferent.
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