“‘It’s tangible, the misery and hopelessness and the bleakness,’ Mortensen says. ‘It gives you much more to work with if you’re filming in that world instead of a green screen.‘ Well, they know where they’re going, but they
don’t know where they’ve been…
USA Today scores the
first official still from John Hillcoat’s take on The Road, with Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Michael K. Williams, and Garret Dillahunt. I found McCarthy’s book decent enough but considerably overpraised — As with mainstream critics’ overheated embrace of
Pan’s Labyrinth, I thought
The Road was post-apocalyptic sci-fi for people who normally condescend to the genre, and thus haven’t read/seen very much of it. And, more than most McCarthy, I found the style seriously grating after while: “
The Man, ashen-faced, sifted through the ash-gray ash. The Child whimpered. His mouth tasted like ash.“
All that being said, I really like the cast they’ve put together here, and, given The Proposition, John Hillcoat sounds like an intriguing choice for this. So, count me in.