Film CreditsDirector: John Hillcoat Starring: Charlize Theron, Viggo Mortensen, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Garret Dillahunt, Molly Parker On DVD:May 25th
In Theaters: November 25th, 2009
It is more than ten years since the world was destroyed–by what, nobody can say. It could have been a nuclear event, or the collision of the Earth with another cosmic entity. Or the sun may have imploded and taken out the planet as collateral damage to its own flameout. One day there was a big flash of light, and then nothing. The result of this cataclysmic event, whatever it was, is that there is no energy, no power, no vegetation, no food. Millions of people have been eradicated, destroyed by fires and floods or scorched and incinerated in their cars where they sat when the event hit or suffocated by starvation and despair in civilization's slow death after the power went out.
The Man (Viggo Mortensen) and The Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) – "each the other's world entire," as McCarthy describes them in his novel – are on the move with all their precious possessions—whatever food and clothing they can scrounge, utensils and tools, plastic bags, tarps, blankets and anything else to keep warm in the frigid, sunless, ash-filled outdoors—on their backs and in a shopping cart outfitted with a bicycle mirror so they can see who's coming up behind them. Their desperate, improvised traveling gear and their scruffy unwashed bodies give them the look of the homeless. And that is what they are. That's what everybody is in this lifeless frontier.
Then there are the numerous flashbacks to the man's life with his wife (Charlize Theron) before the great disaster, before she took her own life rather than see it taken by what or who she knew was coming. The man clings to these memories that nourish him spiritually and help him to push his increasingly frail body ever further in the quest to get his son to some kind of safety. The sweet memory of his life before the fall and of his halcyon childhood days are some of the bright spots that enliven the terrain for him and the boy.
The child's innate goodness, his compassion and his sense of wonder and curiosity are also bright spots in this story, reminding the man of why he must keep on going no matter what even when he has forgotten why he must do it.
FYI
The highly anticipated big screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's beloved, best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel boldly imagines a future in which men are pushed to the worst and the best that they are capable of—a future in which a father and his son are sustained by love.
GALLERY
