The Road
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Road |
| Original title | The Road |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 112 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | John Hillcoat |
| script | Joe Penhall |
| production |
Paula Mae Schwartz , Steve Schwartz , Nick Wechsler |
| music |
Nick Cave , Warren Ellis |
| camera | Javier Aguirresarobe |
| cut | Jon Gregory |
| occupation | |
| |
The Road is an American film directed by John Hillcoat from 2009. The film is an adaptation of the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy and focuses on the journey of a father and his son through a post-apocalyptic America. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee play the leading roles . The film was shown in select theaters in North America from November 25, 2009. The German theatrical release was on October 7, 2010.
action
After a catastrophic event, only hinted at by a strong fire, a father and his young son set out on foot through a devastated America towards the coast. Their arduous hike takes several months. Most animal and plant species are extinct, so diet is one of the main problems of the two. Since other survivors z. Some of them do not shy away from cannibalism , father and son avoid other people. They carry their few belongings with them in a shopping cart. This also includes a revolver with two rounds of ammunition. The father shows his son how he could use it to commit suicide in the event of his death.
Flashbacks show the family's happy life before the apocalypse. The birth of the son shortly after the catastrophe and the later suicide of the woman are also hinted at. After the woman's death, the man wants to ensure the survival of his son.
One day they meet a gang of heavily armed survivors who they suspect of cannibalism. When one of the survivors tries to relieve himself by the roadside, his father threatens him. However, the man uses a carelessness of the father to bring his son into his power. The father can kill the man with a shot in the head. Both must then flee from the rest of the gang, leaving behind their shopping cart with the last of their belongings. The boy is initially in shock from the incident, but can recover after a while. In their search for food, the two come across a seemingly uninhabited house. In the basement they find numerous almost starved and in some cases severely mutilated people who obviously serve as “supplies” for another gang of cannibals. When the gang returned to the house, the two fled to the upper floor. Shortly before they are discovered, the emaciated people in the cellar manage to get out through the cellar door that has been left open. When the gang is busy getting things back under control, father and son can take advantage of the situation to escape from the house.
A few days later they find a small shelter and plenty of groceries at a house whose owner has died . They spend a few days in it before they start moving on with a handcart full of groceries. As the journey continues, they meet an old man. While the father initially sees him as an opponent, the son convinces him to buy the old man a dinner. The next day, however, the two travel on alone without the old man.
Meanwhile, the father is showing increasing signs of a serious illness: He is plagued by a worsening cough. One day he wakes up and throws blood . He tries to prepare his son to do without him.
Shortly afterwards, they finally reach the coast, which however does not meet their expectations and has hardly any food or essentials for survival. The father sees a stranded ship just offshore and swims to it to look for food. He leaves the revolver with the last cartridge to the boy, which he uses to guard the cart with the food. When the boy falls asleep, however, a thief steals all the supplies.
After the father returns from the ship, they look for and find the thief. The father takes back the cart with the groceries and in turn robbed the thief of all his clothes, thereby accepting his frostbite . At the boy's insistence, they later try unsuccessfully to get his things back. Shortly afterwards, the father is shot with an arrow, but manages to kill the attacker with a flare gun that he found in the shipwreck.
Eventually the father, weakened by his injury, succumbs to the consequences of his illness and dies on the beach. After a period of mourning, the son comes across a man whom he is initially hostile to and threatens with a gun. However, after he is convinced that the man is one of the “good guys”, he joins him, his wife and their two children.
production
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Producer Nick Wechsler acquired the film rights to the original Die Strasse from Cormac McCarthy in November 2006 . He offered John Hillcoat to direct the film after seeing The Proposition (2005): “There was something wonderful in the way that John [Hillcoat] portrayed the original humanity of the West in this film Joe Penhall was hired as a screenwriter in April 2007 . Wechsler agreed with the other two producers Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz not to look for a distributor until work on the script has been completed and a leading actor has been found. Contract negotiations were held with Viggo Mortensen back in November , but he was currently in front of the camera for the film Appaloosa in New Mexico .
After reaching an agreement with Mortensen, the shooting began in February 2008 in the greater Pittsburgh area , other locations were in northwestern Pennsylvania , Louisiana and Oregon . The film was shot in barren locations such as abandoned coal fields, shabby neighborhoods of Pittsburgh or a burned-down amusement park, mainly in bad weather. Green plants were partly removed by the crew, partly in the digital post-processing, in which the sky was also retouched. Rich colors are used almost exclusively in the flashbacks.
The budget for the film was $ 20 million.
The film premiered on September 3, 2009 at the Venice Film Festival and was released in German cinemas on October 7, 2010.
criticism
The Road has a 75% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes movie website , based on 203 reviews. The film received an average rating of 64/100 on the Metascore service Metacritic , based on 33 reviews.
The majority of the critics saw in the film a comparatively faithful implementation of the literary original, which, however, precisely because of this does not take advantage of all the possibilities of the medium.
"John Hillcoat is looking for pictures for Cormac McCarthy's end-time vision The Road : In the heart of the film, the father-son story, the flame burns brightly and clearly - despite or perhaps because of her simple sentimentality."
“A similarly skilful adaptation of McCarthy's sparse poetry, as presented by the Coen brothers with their Oscar success, was not what John Hillcoat did when he made The Road . For this he trusts his own medium too little and writes the film with narrative off-text more literary than cinematic. The essence of the original, however, remains intact: Hillcoat's episodic journey through a rotting world is not a spectacle, but an intimate and oppressive character drama. "
"One of the most chillingly effective visions of the world's end ever put on screen — and a heart-rending study of parenthood, to boot."
Roger Ebert saw the film more critically . Despite the good acting performances of Mortensen or Smit-McPhee, the film does not manage to transfer McCarthy's prosaic language onto the screen. With a few exceptions ( No Country for Old Men ), Ebert considers McCarthy's works to be generally unfilmed. A connoisseur of the novel could not enjoy the film again. He said he was grateful that he had read McCarthy's novel.
More reviews:
“Everything is almost like in the book, and that is the problem: only almost. Not quite as shocking, but not nearly as moving either. In addition, there is an inappropriately intrusive soundtrack by Nick Cave and an unnecessary, explanatory voice-over. The theatrical version of The Road is like a well-made copy with minor flaws: forever second choice. Good for those who do not know the template. "
“The bad guys are the others who survived that ominous catastrophe. They speed through the devastated area in archaic Madmax trucks; they have weapons and tattoos, have been brutalized as cannibals and barbarians. Starved monsters, deformed even with fear, grilling babies on a spit. Sometimes that's a little exaggeratedly exciting. But 'Horror is stoicism with a taste for the spectacle', wrote Michael Chabon about McCarthy's end-of-time adventure novel "
“If you haven't read the novel, the film leaves you strangely indifferent. Anyone who has read it cannot forget it in the cinema. The memory of reading overlays the images, unlike No Country for Old Men , the 2007 Oscar-winning McCarthy film adaptation by the Coen brothers. John Hillcoat's reverence for the original is great, too great. Good film adaptations of literature oppose their originals with their own visual power, measuring their strength against those of the words. You can't have that without disrespect. "
Awards
- Won Best Cinematography for Javier Aguirresarobe at the 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards
- Won for Best Actor for Viggo Mortensen at the 2009 Utah Film Critics Association
- Won in the Best Camera category for Javier Aguirresarobe at the Vits Awards 2010
- Nomination for Best Cinematography for Javier Aguirresarobe at the British Academy Film Awards 2010
- Nomination for Best Actor for Viggo Mortensen at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2010
- Nomination for Best Young Actor for Kodi Smit-McPhee at the 2010 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
- Nomination for Best Make-up at the 2010 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
- Nomination for Best Actor for Viggo Mortensen at the Houston Film Critics Society 2009
- Nomination for Best Actor for Viggo Mortensen at the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards 2009
- Nomination for Best Artistic Direction and Best Production Design for Chris Kennedy at the 2009 Satellite Awards
- Nomination for Best Actor for Viggo Mortensen at the Toronto Film Critics Association 2009
- Nomination for the Golden Lion for John Hillcoat at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival
- Nomination for Best Actor for Viggo Mortensen in the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards 2009
- Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Joe Penhall at the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards in 2009
Web links
- The Road in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Road in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for The Road . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2011 (PDF; test number: 124 534 V).
- ↑ NME . NME. November 11, 2009. Retrieved February 4, 2010.
- ↑ 'The Road' Delayed… Yet Again . In: Screen Rant . Retrieved September 10, 2009.
- ↑ Michael Fleming: Road to big screen . In: Variety . November 7, 2006. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
- ↑ Michael Fleming: Penhall paves Road . In: Variety . April 1, 2007. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
- ↑ Missy Schwartz: Viggo Mortensen May Hit The Road . In: Entertainment Weekly . October 7, 2007. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
- ^ Mortensen, Theron on The Road to Pittsburgh . In: USA Today , January 16, 2008. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
- ^ Charles McGrath: At World's End, Honing a Father-Son Dynamic . The New York Times, May 27, 2008.
- ^ Matt Mazur: Hitting 'The Road' with Director John Hillcoat . popmatters.com, November 22, 2009.
- ↑ James Sullivan: A fork (and a bump) in The Road. In: Boston Globe , October 19, 2008. Retrieved January 1, 2009.
- ^ The Road . Rotten tomatoes. Retrieved February 28, 2016.
- ^ The Road . Metacritic. Retrieved April 5, 2010.
- ↑ Michael Kohler: Keep the flame. Frankfurter Rundschau, October 7, 2010, accessed April 4, 2011 .
- ^ Jan Hamm: The Road. Film releases October 7, 2010, accessed April 4, 2011 .
- ^ Dan Jolin: The Road. Empire. Retrieved April 4, 2011 .
- ^ Roger Ebert: The Road. rogerebert.suntimes.com, November 24, 2009, accessed April 5, 2011 .