The Road on Film: Beautiful, Bleak

The book engages with moral arguments about protection and survival: What if everything we believed in vanished, leaving love to stand naked on its own--would that be enough? McCarthy's writing has always been a manly affair, so it made sense that he reduced his world to father and son, with the Man emerging heroic. Here, when the Man speaks of carrying "the fire," i.e., the conviction of humanity, it rings more hollow, even though Mortensen grapples well with the potential corniness of that line (he gives a somber, deeply affecting performance). The wasteland that surrounds them--the sun's fire extinguished, the forests burning--makes forcing someone you love to endure it seem like a selfish act. "I don't want to just survive," the Woman tells the Man, and The Road creates such a seamless vision of misery that it persuades you she was right. See it if you have the strength, but if your friends turn you down, arm yourself with a stiff drink on the way in; fortification is needed.