Brightest Young Things

(Spoilers)

And it is. It's a bleak, desperate, gray, frustrating love story with nothing really to look forward to, no rosy golden aged future if we just pass this hurdle, there's nothing. There's just one man's drive to keep first his family, and then just his son, alive.

The Road is a love story.

Now I haven't read the book and I'm not a film critic so if you're looking for insights to either, then - just stop here. I write, when I write, about how things affect me. If you don't care and you haven't stopped already, then please do now.

Moving on.

I haven't read the book, and I tried to limit myself to not knowing anything about either (of course one can't help it, given we're in the days of the 10 minute give-everything-away preview). What I do know is that there's no reason given for the disaster that occurs in the book, and none in the movie, either. I liked that. I didn't want it to be one of those "we destroyed the environment" movies where we all feel bad upon leaving the theater because we somehow believe we did bad things to the father and son, or one of those "we started a war" movies that makes you feel the same thing about how bad humans are. McCarthy didn't even know what caused it when he wrote the book. Didn't care. Doesn't matter. I also knew that the wife/mother role was greatly expanded for the movie. Good or bad? We'll see.

As far as humans? We know they're pretty fucking bad. They are selfish, petty, creatures who will drop you in a second to pursue another whim or fancy. We betray, we gossip, we back stab, we cheat, we make each other out to be worse to others in order to gain favor, we rape, kill, maim, and slaughter. Shit we even get snarky on the internet to people we don't know. Now add a devastating world disaster to the mix and you may just begin to see that all we really do is get worse. And McCarthy shows it. Let's just say that if for a moment you imagined the most vile things people can do to each other, and then add on top of that eating each other, that you'll almost get it. And- no, this isn't SAW and it's not a gore-fest. There's enough left to the imagination that the scenes didn't have to be forced upon you.

But for as bad as we are, we're also pretty good. Or some of us are.

The Road is a Love Story.

It opens before the son is born. All we know is something just happened. Somewhat told in flashbacks as memories strike, it then forwards us to years later with father and son traveling somewhere. We learn they're headed "south, to the coast." We learn that for years the family struggled to stay alive. The son was born. And the mother after 7 or so years just decides she doesn't want to live anymore. She begs to take the son with her in death. The father refuses, begs her to stay, says they have to stay alive. She's had enough and walks off into the cold wet darkness to die. Is she selfish or pragmatic? Is she to blame that she doesn't want to stay in a life that seemingly has no future? That she doesn't want to be in their situation anymore? Is she just not strong enough? "other families are doing it (committing suicide)." "they will find us, and catch us, and rape me and kill me and then rape your son and kill him and eat us all." The Father, resolved that he can't change her mind, lets her walk off, never to be seen again.

(Any of you read the book and seen the movie? What's your take on why the character development of the mother was included in the movie? I don't know.)

I'm assuming the actual action portion of the movie takes place over a couple of months. There's no real alluding to time. All we are told is that at one point they have "100 miles, as the crow flies" to get to the coast. As mentioned the disaster occured about 7 years before they are seen walking.

"The whole thing now is what do you do?" - McCarthy

What do you do? Do you quit and leave? Do you struggle on to keep going when there's nothing anywhere to get to? When your entire life consists of nothing but starving and freezing and dodging "bad people" and trying to get somewhere that you don't even know exists or what will happen when you get there? When there's no hope? What makes some people see hope when there isn't any? Do you turn into "bad people" and join a band of roving thieves, murderers, and cannibals seeking comfort in a group setting no matter how horrible you turn yourself in order to survive? or are you strong enough to never turn bad? What do you do?

"I'll kill anyone who touches you, that's my job." Father to son.

"If I died what would you do?"
"I'd want to die too, so I could be with you."
"So you could be with me?"
"So I could be with you."

Much is left to the viewer about the relationship between the father and son. As it goes on, the father gets worse. In his single-minded pursuit to stay alive and keep his son alive he exhibits some beginnings of cruelty that the son calls him on. I think one of the most moving scenes was leaving the thief standing alone, naked, on the side of the road as punishment for stealing their food. It was one of the single most brilliant scenes I've witnessed in recent memory. And it pulls at you. Was it right or wrong? What do you do? At what cost do you give up what humanity you have in order to survive?

Now I will state that I think the boy wasn't as hard as I believe he should have been. Remember, he was born after the event. He knows nothing of television or phones or friends or lights or anything. All he's known is cold, wet, darkness, hunger, starvation, abandonment, and horrible acts by horrible people. My criticism is that he was far too naive for the setting.

At one point they happen upon a fallout shelter filled with food. The father and son bathe, shave, eat what is probably their first warm meal in years, and the father has a drink of Jack Daniels and a cigarette. The son looks at him and is asked:

"You don't even know who I am really, do you?"

That struck me, too. That, despite being father and son, given their situation and the desperate struggle to try to make something out of it, to reach a point that may never be reached, the son had never witnessed the father just being himself. He'd taken on another personality to achieve an end result. He was a caricature of himself and had never been seen in his true form by someone who had been so close to him given their situation.

The Road Is a Love Story.

In the end we don't know what happens to us, as humans. The father has pushed on, sick, (I'm guessing he was a lunger) until he couldn't push on anymore and dies on the coast. The son is found by a family of "good people" who don't eat people. We are left to hope that they make it, but to where? To what?  What's there to make it to? Given the horrors we've seen prior we know that the majority of people left alive have gone the easy way and become predators, ignoring whatever streams of humanity that once flowed through their veins. It won't be easy.

I left a bleak, dreary, cold, rainy afternoon to find myself in an even more bleak, dreary, cold, rainy future. What do you do now?

The Road Is A Love Story.
How far will you go for those you love, or do you not have it in you to struggle? And in the end, does it really matter if we all die anyway?

Bonus:
read Alan's interview with director John Hillcoat here