The Road

[intertribal]

Well, that was waaaaay more depressing than the book.  I think it's because you're not seeing the desolation of the dying Earth in the book.  It's also because it feels more like first-person than the book's third-person.  The Man is the narrator now, not just a character.  Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee did a really unbelievable job, in such difficult roles.  I thought the expansion of The Wife's role was a good thing.  There were tons of heart-wrenching scenes, of course (every scene is either horrific or heart-wrenching), but the conversations where The Man is trying to convince her not to commit suicide are some of the heaviest.  Because you can really see now how awful the world has become, how stripped down to the only things that last.  And I think that's sort of what McCarthy's all about, those lasting things - both good and bad.

I think what really came through for me was how The Boy, who has never seen the world before the trauma (he is both fortunate and unfortunate because of this), was a sort of God-figure, the conscience of humanity - or The Man's "Warrant."  The Boy embodies mercy.  The movie also articulated what "the fire" really is.  I also found myself thinking about all the people that, post-trauma, turn into the bad guys - how did that happen?  What do they think about?  What happened to their families?  And what the hell happens next?  And other things we can't know.

Great adaptation.