You know, occasionally, once in a blue moon, there comes a film that marketing departments love.
In the sense that they practically sell themselves.
More often than not, many films strike me as being easy to market.
Well …
Maybe not easy to market, but certainly easy enough to put through the marketing mill: insert actors, posters, marketing — and the movie — in one end, and get sales out of the other.
And maybe an Oscar or two, if you’ve get it right: which only adds to the hype!
But Movie Night Adrian and I watched possibly the one film, tonight, that its producers marketing department must have had nightmares about.
Well …
Possibly not nightmares, but certainly went in the wrong direction with.
I know.
I’ve actually looked for the relevant trailer on YouTube.
And — if you believe what you saw — you’d expect that The Road — with Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee — was a thrilling action adventure, with bombs, sex, cannibals and Charlize Theron, over every spare surface.
Well …
Charlize Theron’s in it …
But that trailer doesn’t tell you everything …
Let me re-phrase that, the shop-window that the trailer is definitely a bit of misapplied hype.
The Road see’s Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee as an unnamed father and son, trying desperately to reach the coast, after an unspecified apocalypse.
And having to cope with what has to be the most realistic post-apocalypse I think I’ve seen in some time …
•••••
Do you remember the last time I mentioned Kevin D, and his wife, Sarah … ?
They were down, a couple of weeks ago, and managed to bring a copy of The Prestige along with them: certainly a film that’s worth watching, I think.
We actually managed to have an interesting natter about Avatar: my point was that Cameron and co could have spent a touch more time thinking through one or two details about the Na’vi home-world’s ecology a little better.
To quote Terry Pratchett — the only writer to include a sewer system as part of a fantasy world’s background — “Sometimes, you have to do these things from the bottom up.”
You have to think these things through, logically, in other words
•••••
Which is sort of my point, about The Road.
Going by what Adrian and I saw on screen tonight, The Road isn’t a big budget, effects laden film. (Well … Not one that’s full of obvious special efforts. Any kind of visual or audio effect has got to be good, if it’s THAT unobtrusive.)
Oh, no.
The Road is actually a very small budget drama that actually tries to look long and hard at the effects of a major disaster*.
By looking at how a father and son try to cope with living in a world that’s dramatically changed from how it was°.
•••••
Very much so, actually. This is not a post-apocalyptic action film in the style of Mad Max.
Not at all.
The Road is a film that sees two people who’ve survived a huge tragedy and find hope in small miracles: finding an expected supply of food, meeting someone non-threatening, finding a thief who isn’t as bad as they’d thought.
But also magnifies the obstacles they face: ravaging gangs of people not afraid to be cannibals, and the very fact that the climate is against them.
•••••
Right, I’m going to be honest, here.
I’m going to get myself off to bed, in a few minutes.
But I’ll leave you with an opinion, before I do.
The Road isn’t going to be a film that grabs everyone.
But I think that if you liked Moon or Valhalla Rising … ?
Then The Road could well have a lot of appeal.
Just ignore the trailers for it, though. They really aren’t a good advert.
* One which isn’t specified, as I think I mentioned, but looks to me as if it’s either a nuclear winter, or some form of environmental disaster thats produced a similar result.
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