Detour for this dreary 'Road'
Posted: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 7:00 AM by Paige Newman
Filed Under:
Movies, TV
Last week, it was officially announced that “The Road” would be pushed to 2009. And frankly, I’m glad.
Don’t get me wrong, Cormac McCarthy is my favorite living American fiction writer. My favorite McCarthy novel: “The Crossing,” the middle novel of his Border trilogy. I challenge you to find a book that begins with a more fascinating 80 pages. But when I heard Hollywood was making a movie of “The Road,” my first instinct was a slow-motion head shake.
The Weinstein Company |
"The Road" was supposed to come out on Nov. 14. Now it's been pushed to 2009.
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To be fair, all the players looked promising: Director John Hillcoat helmed one of my favorite Westerns, “The Proposition.” Viggo Mortensen seemed the perfect, unshowy actor for the lead role. And, hey, I’d been skeptical of the film version of “No Country For Old Men,” but was happily surprised by the Coen brothers’ efforts (too bad the same cannot be said for Billy Bob Thornton’s “All the Pretty Horses”).
And I know it’s
hard to adapt a book to film. After all, part of what makes “The Road” so compelling is that you take that journey while you read, and the tension builds as you turn the pages, in a way that wouldn’t seem possible to translate to the screen. But, honestly, it wasn’t just that.
“The Road’s” post-Apocalyptic tale of a man and his son making their way across the country, avoiding the starving marauders who have resorted to cannibalism, and just trying to stay alive seems just a little too prescient for our times. The two characters head east, not because salvation lies there, but because they literally just need a direction to go in. In these dropping stock market, war-torn, mortgage-crisis, befuddling days, I’m not sure I can bring myself to a theater, sit down and watch what’s going to happen after the world ends.
These days, I’m having a hard time watching anything that’s very dark, which seems darn inconvenient because this is the time of year we usually get great, albeit depressing films. Usually, I’m grateful after a summer of fluff to dive into something deeper and darker. Hey, if it weren’t for awards season, I wonder if we’d even get these films at all. Usually, I’m first in line.
But not this year. At least not right now. Even at home, I seem to indulging in more escapist fare than usual, whether it be John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow” or episodes of “Stylista.” And my passion for TV crime drama feels even more comforting. They’re like sitcoms for dark times. No matter what the tragedy, at the end of the hour, it’s solved and justice (which I can’t seem to fathom these days in real life) prevails.
During the Great Depression, gangster films and comedies reigned. And I wonder if, in a way, we’re back to a place where we need entertainment to play the role of comforter again. Yes, films should illuminate, but shouldn’t they also provide an escape from all that’s dark, dreary and seemingly insurmountable?
Is the economic and political climate affecting what you watch on television and at the movies? Share your views in the comment space below.
