Tuesday 23 September 2008

The Road - Script review of movie based on Cormac McCarthy's bestseller

Thanks to Daan for pointing this out (sorry I took a few days to get it posted Daan!). We had some photos from the shoot a while ago but this is all about the script.

Quiet Earth has this to say about it. Beware of possible spoilers:

To be blunt, the script is a complete stunner. It is a devastating masterwork which, I'm glad to report, has been written with absolute devotion to the original novel. If this is the script that gets filmed, then The Road will not only be the most important post-apocalyptic film ever made but it will profoundly affect the cinema going world. But I can't help but wonder; is the world ready for a film this dark?

I don't know how it's possible but everything, and I mean everything, from the book is in this script. No attempt whatsoever has been made to gloss over some of the book's more difficult subject matter and nowhere has Penhall tried to explain away the unexplainable. He truly gets this book and he gets why it was so effective. For example, we're still not told why the world is a charred smoldering pile of ashen snow, though there is a small hint at the beginning. The ambiguity is terrifying and Penhall is willing to let us draw our own conclusions about character motivations.

Surprisingly, most of the additions do the exact opposite of what I would have expected them to do. They actually make the world scarier, the situation seem more dire, and life more hopeless than the book even did. The first 15 pages are just scene after scene of powerful head-shaking stuff. I predict people are going to be blown away by how far this film is willing to go. And again, I don't mean to insinuate designer gore or cheap thrills but just dark dark dark subject matter and quiet, personal scenes of real life terror.

There is lots more to the review here, but by all accounts The Road is definitely one to watch.

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3 comments:

  1. Never have i been more excited about seeing a movie! and it better be released here as soon as possible, i want to watch it in a proper fashion, In a cinema. Not behind my computer :P

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  2. Initially, I was scared that the movie version will just screw it up. But reading this, I'm even more excited.

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