Succinctly put. This is precisely what makes this film work. It’s what made the book work. His ability to embody the character from the page so completely and so convincingly was absolutely crucial if the film had any chance at all of capturing the crux of this story.

I feel this story is about fatherhood, more importantly being a good father, and really nothing else. Whatever other social commentary might lie within doesn’t really matter in comparison. McCarthy said that the book was a love story to his son; and in reading this book it couldn’t be more obvious. His description of this father and son as “each the other’s world entire” tells us all we really need to know. I think you more expressively say that here “It’s readily apparent that Hillcoat, absorbing and utilizing the creased cynicism of McCarthy’s novel, intends that The Road not really be taken as a story of The Future at all, but as a timeless tale of the struggle against moral darkness and the essential role of the parent-child relationship in that struggle.’

And with fatherhood being the crux of the story it affected me much more profoundly, I believe, than it would have had I no children.

You’re right about the contrivance of the apocalypse; stripping away all the bullshit of the world left McCarthy with the ability to focus on the father and son dynamic. No “quaint concerns” to get in the way. How do I provide for my children? Am I making the right choices for them? Have I taught them enough to be self-sufficient when I’m gone? Will my children be able to determine the difference between right and wrong?

Most importantly he asks “why keep going?”

The Man and The Woman represent both sides of a moral delimma: admit defeat and give up or keep going despite the absence of hope. McCarthy is able to convincingly argue both sides yet chooses one to explore and show us. This is the entire foundation for the simultaneous “resolve and self-doubt” as you said within The Man. He’s not convinced he’s right, but he’s made a decision and he’ll see it through to the end.

There were several scenes in the book that the movie really got right. The Man discovering the Coca-Cola in the machine and giving it to The Boy as a “treat”. It captured how necessary this gesture was to the man, to be able to provide nice things for his son, while juxtaposing it against the paltry and pathetic conditions in which this gift was given. How frustrating and demoralizing it must be to want to provide for one’s children while not having the means to do so. Simple, brilliant, and effective.

The scene when The Man woke suddenly and immediately felt to see if The Boy was still breathing. The Man looking at the boy’s trinkets in the bomb shelter, trying to learn a little about the boy he loves so much yet hasn’t the luxury to really get to know. The Man washing a dead man’s brains out of his son’s hair. “I’ll kill anyone who touches you”, he says. Such a brutal yet beautiful statement of devotion and love.

Even some of the scenes that were modified, like the scene where The Man and The Boy find the people being held in the basement for food, worked. It increased the suspense for the movie audience and introduced visually the man’s worst fear of having to kill his own son. Difficult to ponder and really difficult to watch.

I wish, however, Hillcoat hadn’t downplayed The Boy’s near-death sickness at the beach. That event, in my opinion, pushed The Man to the brink. He was changed after that, and his treatment of The Thief helped demonstrate that. Also, adding the living bug at the burned-out amusement park betrayed the bleakness and hopelessness of the novel. It felt like a concession, like he was throwing a bone to the audience to lessen the tremendous despair he’d just given them.

But honestly, I’m not sure it’s possible to transfer the full weight and depth of the story to the screen. Being a person much more interested in books than movies I typically find this to be the case with virtually every book adaptation. While there may be a better movie within those pages somewhere, I don’t believe that any movie has the ability to rival or exceed the book. Having said that, this movie gets more right than it gets wrong, and I’d have to agree overall with how you scored this film.

I think it’s a safe bet to assume that if you liked the novel, you’ll liked the film. I don’t the film is an unqualified success, for the reasons I elucidated in my review, but I would also add that time has made me come around to the notion that this may be the best “faithful” adaptation of McCarthy’s novel we could have hoped for: good but not great. There’s a better movie in the novel somewhere, but it would require quite a bit of rejiggering of the source material. The Coens took No Country For Old Men, a great novel, and turned it into a cinematic masterpiece precisely because they knew exactly where McCarthy’s sensibilities and their own overlapped, and where they complemented one another. Hillcoat isn’t doing anything so daring. His vision of the The Road is just a reverent filmic version of the novel’s substantive and emotional core. Good stuff, just not great.

I’m particularly interested in seeing Mortenson as the Man; he may very well be one of only a handful of actors who could pull off this role. It’s actually one of the reasons I’m so eager to see this film.

I hear it’s out on Blu-ray this spring; I’m waiting for it with both trepidation and excitement. Trepidation because it’s just so damn emotionally battering; excitement because this father and son love story is just so damn beautiful.

This passage here is terrific:

“It’s readily apparent that Hillcoat, absorbing and utilizing the creased cynicism of McCarthy’s novel, intends that The Road not really be taken as a story of The Future at all, but as a timeless tale of the struggle against moral darkness and the essential role of the parent-child relationship in that struggle. The not-so-subtle implication is that The Road’s nightmare world of blight and brutality is only a slight exaggeration of the world we are dwelling in right now.”