The Last Movie I Saw

John Hillcoat's The Road is an incredibly well-made, well-acted exercise in dystopian angst. The story is set in some kind of post-apocalyptic world where the sun no longer cracks through the endless haze and the living have been reduced to a few scraggly trees and fewer, even more scraggly, people roaming about looking for food and other types of sustenance. Some scenes are immensely heart-wrenching, as it becomes apparent that survival may be possible only by relinquishing the last vestiges of human connection and compassion. When the character played by Viggo Mortenson (giving his usual excellent performance) takes the clothes of a man who earlier robbed him and his son, the feeling that he has finally resigned from the human race is so palpable as to induce shivers, and suddenly the man you've been pulling for is transformed into something truly pitiable. That feeling is made worse when it seems that his son (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) has come to the same conclusion. But even within this spiritual bleakness, Hillcoat finds some room to suggest at least a possibility of redemption, and that keeps the film from sliding into meaninglessness. If you can stand confronting the depths of what we are all likely capable of in the face of almost total dissolution of normal social bonds, this is worth a look, if only as a cautionary tale to cherish what we have now.