Ok, where the fuck were we Wednesday night when they were handing out random passes to John Hillcoat‘s “The Road” with Viggo Mortensen in New York’s Union Square? We’ll tell you where: not in fucking Union Square, argh!
Apparently it was an impromptu, unannounced test-screening, but people from the media (or at least close to ’em) still got in including members of CHUD and Vulture. The Cormac McCarthy novel which the film is based on is bleak, but ultimately hopeful (in a, umm, sorta bleak kind of way), but CHUD’s people apparently had problems with all the grimness (didn’t these guys like ‘Dark Knight’?) thought it was a “overall mess.” Perhaps this is why the film is being potentially pushed to 2009 – perhaps it’s not ready like the rumors suggest?
“The focus group I attended railed against the repetitive score, which was probably temp but sounded like a minimalist new Nick Cave score that was heavy on the piano and droned through the heavily dramatic moments [ed. yes, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis composed the score]. There’s no ‘movie’ there.”
The review continues and is rather scathing.
“The film never pretends to be interested in its opaque story, replacing what I assume would be literary details with bleak, miserablist [sic] moments edited together randomly, none feeling like they emerged from the same film. It might just be unadaptable, because after the first twenty minutes the rest of the film is a crushing bore of a foregone conclusion.”
One, we may have to punch this focus group in the groin, because Cave and Ellis’ repetitive score to “The Assasination of Jesse James” was amazing and lugubrious in the most amazing way (one of the best scores in recent years).
Vulture’s intern however was much more positive about the picture. They say, of course, it’s bleak, have you read the novel? (which apparently the CHUD reader hadn’t).
“Arguably the best parts of the film, aside from some stellar acting, are the postapocalyptic urban exterior scenes — burnt-out malls, crumbling highways, long-abandoned neighborhoods. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Hillcoat did most of the filming in and around Pittsburgh, a bastion of urban American beauty, but every inch of the landscape and set seems to be painstakingly trashed.”
An unfinished film? Other than from a technical stand-point (color correction and whatnot), Vulture seems to think the film seemed “pretty close to completion.”
Hillcoat expands the book’s flashback sequences to give Charlize Theron more screen time, and contrasts the grayscale color palette of the movie-present with the vivid one of the movie-past. Viggo Mortensen seems to play a mix of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings and Tom Stall from A History of Violence. His unnamed character is human and believable. As his son, newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee holds his own.
Whom to believe: Well, a random person on CHUD’s message board, versus a Vulture intern seems like no contest, but the CHUD reader’s critique is actually quite articulate. We’ll have to split the difference and believe (especially because of the aforementioned potential push), that “The Road,” has some problems and is still kind of unfinished (PS, this was suggested back in September by Nick Cave who was still feverishly working on the music). Also, an AICN reader gave it a major thumbs up too (called it an Oscar contender).
But we’re greatly anticipating the film, so hopefully, it is ready for the Oscar 2008 season. Here’s our in-depth script-review if you want to know more. Update: A reader hips us to the fact that AICN says (further down in the piece) that Cave and Ellis’ score is still incomplete and that this test-screening was utilizing a temp soundtrack (maybe that’s why it was super repetitive?). Here’s some of their brilliant work on the aforementioned ‘Jesse James’ one of our favorite films from 2007 and certainly one of the most beautiful.
