As I attest to in my review, though John Hillcoat is a more than capable director and his psycho-western The Proposition was a more than bravura take on the long dead genre, Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of desolation and sacrifice would have come closer to the source material (and McCarthy's Faulkneresque prose poetry) if someone like Bela Tarr or, in crossing over, the late great austere master Andrei Tarkovsky were at the helm. The film is visually magnificent and Viggo Mortensen's central performance is awe-inspiring as they say, and Hillcoat does a marvelous job in adaptation (leaving out very little when all is said and done) but there is just a feel that should be there that is just not. But then, I am splitting hairs, for my criticism, though seemingly major, is probably a lesser concern than it should be. One cannot really ask what a film would be like under the auspices of another director. Well one can, but one probably shouldn't. Imagine what the film would have been like with Antonioni at the helm. There I go again. I'll try to stop. Anyway, that being as it may, here is my review of The Road.
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