Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, director John Hillcoat’s The Road takes place in a devastated, post-apocalyptic world where violence runs rampant and humanity is as extinct as the plant life. It’s a work of fiction…isn’t it?
I recently had the opportunity to travel to
Understanding from the film’s production notes that Mr. Hillcoat and his crew made a concerted effort to find actual physical locations to represent their post-apocalyptic landscape, I asked him if he was attempting to, perhaps subliminally, get across that we are already part way there. He replied: “It’s very much, you know, the warning signs are already here and to me it felt really familiar, exactly for that reason and I think it was important.”
Like the novel, the film makes no attempt to explain the event, or events, which caused the apocalypse. Nor should it; it’s irrelevant. The cause of this tragic world could be many things, and that is left to each audience member’s imagination. Continuing his answer to my question, Mr. Hillcoat explained the importance of keeping the world of the film as familiar as possible in order to truly express Cormac McCarthy’s vision:
It had that kind of referencing to stuff that we’ve already seen and experienced in a way. So yeah, for [McCarthy] it’s very much about the here and now and it’s all metaphors and spirituality and his own relationship and his own learning . . . whereas, if we created that kind of urban CGI, then it just becomes sort of superficial and misses the point.
Researching locations, Hillcoat and company went to locales that had been devastated by tragic events that may or may not be the same that caused the bleak world of the film; locations like Mt. St. Helens in Washington State and the Katrina-beaten New Orleans. While answering a question posed by one of my fellow journalists about a piece of biblical graffiti (“Behold the valley of the slaughter”) that appears in the film, screenwriter Joe Penhall referred to the real-life biblical warnings that were found upon a visit to Louisiana:
When John [Hillcoat] went down to New Orleans… he came back with these extraordinary photographs from outside people’s homes and on walls of quite long tracks of biblical graffiti…which was extraordinary, lots of them, and it was apocalyptic, it was extraordinary how people had turned to the Bible in that moment.
Perhaps the violent nature of the world that exists in The Road was most familiar, tragically, to actor Michael K. Williams, who plays the thief in the film. During the production, Mr. Williams lost someone close to him, a young man he refers to as his “little brother” who was randomly murdered while on his way home. The day he was needed on set was the day of the funeral, and the emotion felt by Mr. Williams carried over into his performance. Still, despite this tragic event, Mr. Williams understands that beneath the grim nature of The Road is a story of hope. When asked about the film’s constant references to “carrying the fire,” Mr. Williams explained:
That was a tough time for me, there was a lot of darkness around my personal life and even though things seem really bleak you have to remember we have a choice in life. You have choices to choose the right path or the wrong path and keeping the fire alive is hope, staying positive minded and looking for the silver lining… and I identified with that.
Despite his character’s dark fate (Williams: “He probably got eaten.”), it’s when the thief is confronted by the father and son characters central to the story that the movie’s message of hope comes full circle. While the father is content to leave the thief to die, the boy makes a stand and insists they return his clothes and offer him food.
Perhaps this is McCarthy and Hillcoat’s plea to the younger generation. Although we may be living in a society filled with violence and cruelty, the younger generation need not follow in their predecessor’s footsteps. This world can still be saved. There is still hope.
