As we work on new material for the band I've had some down time and have been catching up on my movie queue! The other night I watched The Road. The Road is about a man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son trekking their way through a post apocalyptic United States. I really enjoyed the cinematography of this film. There were these long shots of father and son walking through these once populous cities, now abandoned. There were these intense overhead shots of what was once a wooded area that now housed only dead trees or ships that were settled in what was once a great body of water. While some may not agree with me, the colors in this movie are brilliant. The dark yellows and greens used to symbolize death was absolutely breathtaking.
What I also found interesting is that the son was born into this world. He never knew any other way of life. All he knew was this world in which everything was dying, where food is scarce and you learn at an early age that there are good guys and bad guys. One scene that I found touching was when the father and son come across an abandoned building. Inside there's a soda machine and the father is able to get a soda out for his son. He opens it up and the son asks what it is. The father tells him that it's a treat just for him. The son tries soda for the first time and wants nothing more than to share this special moment with his father.
They have this amazing bond that you see throughout the film. When they're helping each other bathe or reading together by candlelight it's so apparent that they only have each other and they're fine with that. Now there are flashbacks to when the mother was still present, but she left because it was too difficult for her to deal with the reality of what had become of the world. So one night she left while her son slept and just walked into the night. While the father had a difficult time letting go at first he began to realize that she was never coming back and that he had to let that part of him go. There's this fairly emotional scene where he wakes up after having a dream about her and walks over to this bridge, takes one final look at his only photo of her and tosses it over the bridge. Then he takes his wedding ring off and can't bring himself to throw that over so he slides it to the edge and leaves it there.
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There were two scenes that nearly broke me. There was a flashback to when they had to destroy the family piano to use it for firewood. For me that was a major transition in the story as far as survival goes. It had finally gotten to the point where they needed to start doing whatever they could in order to survive. It was the beginning of what was to become their reality. And then there was the scene when the father dies. It takes two days for the son to leave his side. The death wasn't drawn out nor was it a huge production. They went to sleep one night and the father never woke up.
This movie made a huge impact on me and has now become one of my favorite movies of 2009.
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