The Road (movie review)

Nearly two years ago, I read The Road. I started late at night, home alone, sober. Three mistakes. By the time I finished I barely wanted to relinquish the quasi-fetal position I'd assumed on the floor, let alone go to sleep. Strange as it sounds, though, this is a glowing review. I can't remember the last time a book moved so much with so little.

Almost one year ago I added the novel to a class I teach. I'd never taught anything like it, and I was not at all sure it would work. I tried to strip my pedagogy down to the austerity of McCarthy's prose, posing just one question per class, the first and most persistent being "What's the difference between surviving and living?" Surprisingly, the students took the meager bait and ran farther than they had with litanies of questions on other books.

Around the same time as my teaching experiment, rumors of the movie's release began to seem serious. Then mysterious delays were announced. I waited. Summer came and went. I waited some more. Fall came, and was nearly spent before we were told, finally, definitively, that the movie would open the day before Thanksgiving--which sounded like a tasteless joke but wasn't.

About a month ago, Banjo52 offered a review of the movie, which I avoided reading lest he give something away.

Last week, I tried to see the movie with a friend while visiting family for the holidays only to find it wasn't playing anywhere nearby.

Today, finally, I saw the movie myself.

The good news: though there are several significant changes from the novel in terms of action and dialogue, and virtually no narration survives, there's nothing wrong with anything about the adaptation. There's nothing wrong with it as a movie in its own right either. I know this sounds like terminally faint praise, but 95% of movies I see have at least a couple fatal flaws in realism, consistency, subtlety, etc.

More good news: some real imagination went into the scenery and filming, including some of the best computer-generated shots (grounded ships, vacant cities) I've ever seen. In fact, much as less is more with this story, I wouldn't mind more such shots.

The pace is slow, as it should be, yet it feels a bit busy somehow, as if the director is afraid we'll get "bored" with the emptiness. But McCarthy works so hard precisely to achieve that emptiness, that fatal boredom, that banality of everything, that I think it's a mistake to make the movie world so visually stimulating. More importantly, perhaps, I wish there were more obsessiveness over physicality--which largely means pain. We see a lot of fires, for example, but we never see the man struggle to build one. We hear about his preoccupation with food and shoes, and we see filthy, haggard faces, but we don't really feel the urgency of hunger, the way it gnaws at the mind and soul as well as body. I've done a lot of camping, and I know that it's the little rituals that make or break you: cold hands rolling up a tarp, lumpy ground against hips and shoulders, stiffness of knees after sitting. So few movies do justice to these kinds of details. (Castaway came close, in the first half.) McCarthy is such a physical writer, almost to the point of self-parody at times, that I hoped for more of this from the film. Less color wouldn't hurt either. Less music, or none at all, would be a major boon.

One thing we could use more of--but don't ask me how you do this on film--is blood, brutality, cannibalism, deformity, horror. There's not a huge amount of it in the novel in terms of pages, but they are some of the most teeth-chatteringly awful scenes I've ever read, forcing my students to think twice about the question "Is anything worse than death?" The environment seems more of a threat in the movie than man, and I'm not sure that's the right balance.

Some little oddities: there's a scene in the trailer of a newscaster narrating as the world comes to an end that never appears in the movie. Prob. just as well, but I don't think I've encountered such a disjuncture before. What we do see in the movie is Viggo awake to fire out the window, get up to look, and, with laughable calm, proceed to the bathroom to fill the tub with water. This is true to the novel in letter, but silly in spirit: the pacing is much too quick, emotion flat, as if he simply said, "Huh. It's the end of the world. Guess I'll go draw some water," without any hesitation or reflection. Unrelated gripe: the piano bothers me. I love pianos, and I don't mind the addition, as it makes for a nice motif and gives Viggo a rare chance to give in to grief, but I can't see any reason why he'd take an axe to it. The one thing that doesn't seem lacking throughout the story is wood. (Besides, it would be pretty hard to attack a piano without ruining your axe.)

Somehow Charlize Theron worked for me, even though she's really far too pretty. One of my main reservations about the story is the idea that a mother would kill herself while her son lives. This remains a problem in the film, I think, but somehow Charlize's beauty causes it to make a bit more sense, as if she doesn't quite belong with the man in the first place, let alone in the hideous new world.

As for Viggo, those eyes just ruin it for me. His acting is fine, but there's this self-conscious "special-ness" about his face usually reserved for cheesy made-for-TV movies about Jesus. Of course neither he nor the boy looks nearly thin enough. The boy works very well; though decidedly too old at first, he transitions beautifully toward the end into a being somehow more responsible, sober, mature.

I had just assumed that Robert Duvall would play the rescuer at the end, to the point that I'd imagined him quite vividly and successfully into that role. His appearance as the much less important geezer earlier was therefore more a distraction than it should have been. Too good a show of acting, oddly, and far too much makeup. I sympathize with Banjo52's reservations about the ending, but it's almost exactly rendered from the book--though the man should have had a bad eye and been older, the children were excessive, and the dog just silly. (Even dedicated non-cannibals would surely have eaten the dog, which begs the question, did Viggo and Charlize eat their horse?)

The verdict: see the movie, but don't neglect reading the book. It's true that I almost always prefer the book version, but this really is a special case, because so much of the novel's power comes from its language. Written with scarcely a verb in sight, Shakespearean-style inversion and Biblical diction, it almost drove me away, but after I persisted through ten or twenty pages, I became seduced.

Eye candy

I'm madly in love with Pennsylvania. It's 300 miles of mountains, steady and true and inexhaustibly surprising, from the Delaware river to the Ohio border. Not even Colorado can claim that. Around every bend in the highway a hillside that could have been sculpted, mutely expressive as the hand on Michelangelo's David. Beyond every hill a gleaming valley, barns and silos and cattle nestled in like a cat curled up in the warmest corner of the house. Even from the interstate the scenery is breathtaking; from a two-lane the views are so pretty my stomach knots up sometimes, the way it does when I surprise a deer, or watch live opera. The two-lanes themselves are stunning, skinny black ribbons plunging down hillsides and zipping around creeks, trees combing each other's tops across them. And always there's the indescribable thrill of encountering an Amish buggy, emissaries from a world we wish we hadn't forgotten. Last year around this time, as a light slush had just finished falling, I saw one "parked" at a hardware store, the horse jacketed and steaming, bookended by cars.

When I taught ESL (now "ESOL" or "ELL" if you want to get fussy) the perpetual struggle was to get students talking, to which end I worked on a list of questions which would force anyone to take a side and defend it with some emotion and elaboration: "Are you a cat person or a dog person?" or "Do you prefer coffee or tea?"

A good one would be "How do you feel about driving across Pennsylvania?"

There are those who hate it as much as I love it, but I've yet to encounter anyone who felt lukewarm. (The "haters" worry me, much like those who claim to have no ear for classical music, or the woman I once dated who told me she didn't like peaches. I didn't think such things were negotiable.)

aesthetic projection

I've got myself started on music now, and I may not be able to stop.

Being a fan of classical music is a lonely business, at least in my generation. I rarely admit to my enthusiasm, almost as if it's alcoholism, or some deviant sexual behavior, because when I do own up people usually react as if I've just admitted to alcoholism, or some deviant sexual behavior. You can see the physical revulsion even if they don't actually say, "Oh, I see. You're one of those people."

The most popular alternative is "Really?! You listen to classical music? Good for you!"

It's not oatmeal; I don't do it for the vitamins.

I've spent most of my life reminding myself that many, if not most, people don't like classical music, but I've never quite become convinced.

I was bantering with a friend once about the minutiae of Bill Evans vs. Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday vs. Ella Fitzgerald, Miles vs. Coltrane, etc., and he waxed so cartoonishly enthusiastic, I was forced to say, "You know, Geoff, there are people who don't like jazz," to which he replied, eyes twinkling,

"I've heard that, but I don't believe it."

"Record" review

My buddy over at Banjo52 is always offering movie and CD reviews, so I thought I'd take a page from that book by divulging that I recently surrendered my Ebay virginity in order to buy the Glenn Gould Complete Original Jacket Collection (read about it here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000TJQ75E/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance), an 80 CD audio orgy to the late Canadian pianist (out of print for about a year now, hence the need for Ebay).

I started off listening to the Mozart sonatas, b/c many critics consider those recordings to be Gould at his worst--Gould himself missed no opportunity to express his disdain for Mozart--and I've been struggling to play them myself.

Sure, there are some moments where I'd like to slap Gould upside the head, or just chuckle in disbelief at the ludicrous tempos and almost willfully quirky phrasing and articulation. But there are many more moments where I sit enraptured and stunned--at his incredibly subtle touch and virtuosic technique, yes, but more so at the ways in which he turns these brilliant but played-to-death pieces into brand-new wonders. At first you think he's playing them all "wrong," but after a few minutes you begin to wonder if everyone else is playing them "wrong." For there are scores of other interpretations out there (Richter being the best I've heard, even though he also disliked Mozart), but after hearing Gould's all the rest sort of blur--not that they're not good, and distinct in their own ways, but that his version is SOOOO different, all the rest start to seem the same by comparison. Every other pianist has his own planet, but Gould comes from a whole different galaxy.

There's no middle ground on Gould. I thought I'd found one, in loving his Bach and steering clear of nearly all his other recordings, but now I realize I'm in for the duration, head over heels, up the creek of musical enthrallment without a paddle.

Don't take my word for it; grab a recording of the Goldberg Variations (he made two, one in 1955, one in 1981, both superlative). I dare you to hear Bach the same way again. The 1981 recording almost singlehandedly fired my interest in classical music.

You won't be the first to be "converted" to Bach, or classical music entirely. In A Romance on Three Legs, Katie Hafner's fascinating biography of Gould through his pet Steinway (no talking pianos, just a focus on the instrument), there's a story of a truck driver (habitually hostile to classical music) who happened upon Gould's Goldberg on the radio; before he had a chance to change stations, he had to make a turn, and by the time he had his hands free, he no longer wanted to switch.

In this strange, media-saturated world in which we live, that's about as positive a review as you can get.

Accidental Artwork

On my morning walk recently, on a day shoplifted from August, I was traversing a grassy field with some boulders in its middle, half reveling in the dew making a mess of my shoes and half anxious over having just polished them. Getting closer to the rocks, I found two Starbucks cups perched there, leaning against each other, their lids kissing.

Picking one up with the intention of carrying it and its mate to the nearest trash can, I noticed that it was half full. For some reason this caused me to stop, laugh, and take a step back.

Here was a "found poem" as good as any I could remember. If only most modern art had half as much whimsy.

I wanted to take a picture, but I didn't have a camera. I wanted to use my cell phone--this is exactly why they put cameras on phones--but I didn't have that either.

Then I remembered what the guide in Kenya with the smile bigger than his waist had said: "Sometimes it is best to take a picture with your mind. That way, you can have it with you whenever you wish."

And so I did.

And off I went to the workaday world--the chattering computers, the brooding coffee-maker, the cool white walls and putty file cabinets, the conditioned air--where so many things are so stultifyingly predictable, the little incongruities so often overlooked or banished.

And I carried with me that picture as a reminder that if even Starbucks cups, even litter, can kindle laughter and exhilaration, there may be no need to shuffle off this modern coil after all.

The Wild Suburbs

Walking around my "hood" yesterday afternoon, I spotted a deer among some tall grass and brush in a sort of gully at the edge of a big vacant lot. Creeping closer, I found him to be a spike buck.

No big deal to see deer in the suburbs these days, but I thought I'd see how close I could get without spooking him--no mean feat in broad daylight, on a wide-open hillside, with big crunchy leaves everywhere and a squirrel right next to me. As I got to within maybe ten yards, a much older buck (four points) revealed himself nearby. Continued creeping brought what appeared to be a fawn into view.

As I crept closer still, Senior Buck paced back and forth between the concealed "fawn" and exposed Junior Buck, stopping periodically to stare and stare at me head on, his nose quivering with alertness. When I got to within twenty feet, he began stamping his left forefoot periodically in an apparent show of defiance. Junior kept moving toward Senior, who kept turning to scold him back away. I assumed this was a coordinated defense to protect the "fawn," using Junior as a decoy.

Eventually I reached that invisible point beyond which no deer will tolerate humans, and the "fawn" rose from the brush to reveal that it was in fact a doe. She and Senior and Junior (each about ten feet from the other) all faced me as Senior stamped and nodded, making what looked for all the world like the prelude to a charge. Uncertain what the rules of engagement are when bucks feel their doe is threatened, I began to back off. I had to get back almost to the thirty yard point before the trio seemed significantly calmer.

As I continued to back away, Junior came out of the brush and strolled, in the open, past Senior and Senora. I assumed this was still part of an elaborate decoy maneuver. When he got close to Senora, Senior rushed out of the brush and faced him aggressively. When Junior held his ground, Senior made a false charge, at which point Junior dashed off into another clump of brush.

Suddenly it seemed that the unusual anxiety and agression hadn't been about me, but Junior. Senior was clearly guarding Senora against an interloper, or possibly driving off his own son.

On the way home I hiked down and back up a dry creek bed thick with deadfall and undergrowth, descending between two McMansions and coming up onto a major road. Down in there it could have been the Olympic Peninsula for all it resembled the suburbs.

Welcome to the USA, @%#$*!

I wanted to write about first impressions of the US after a summer abroad, which inevitably becomes a commentary on airports, which continue to fascinate me: their utopian yearnings muddied by the haste and frustration if not despair intrinsic to people herded around like rats through an overlit, candy-strewn maze. But I've done this so many times now, the shock of American shores has dulled to a few puzzlements and chuckles: the prevalence of guns; the vast expanses of space; the abundance yet non-clarity of signs; the weariness and brusqueness of workers; the speed and rigidity of procedures (Customs, Immigration); the bathroom with one handicapped stall and one regular, clogged.

But I'm compelled to write about a different airport experience I had a few days later, picking up two Chinese students. Naturally, they had a lot of luggage, piled onto one cart apiece. I led them to the elevator, but before they could maneuver their carts in, a young white girl and a young black guy (not together, no luggage) rushed in, leaving room only for me and one of the Chinese students (a girl). Looking understandably nervous, the other student (boy) tried to squirm his way into the elevator, at which point everyone in the elevator except me began to grumble and get physically antsy. After what couldn't have been more than 20 seconds, the American girl called out, "Dude, just fuckin' wait!"

I wasn't sure the Chinese boy had heard, much less understood, but I couldn't help saying, "Watch your language, would you?" to which she replied, seething, "Mind your own business!"


At that point I let it drop, because I didn't know where to begin if I were to continue. My mind was ablaze with images of the Russians who'd negotiated my way onto the train against an angry conductor; the Chinese girl who'd all but insisted on carrying my bag for me after a chance meeting on the street; the Chinese family that took me all around Dunhuang; the Kazakh guy who'd bought me a beer and smoothed my way across the border; the other Kazakhs who'd given me an unsolicited lift; the Uzbeks in various markets who'd given me free samples of apricots and walnuts and cheese; the Kyrgyz nomads who'd waited until 10 or 11 pm for their own dinner to make sure we foreigners ate at leisure; the British steward who'd held a woman's baby, and heated milk and special meals for her; the passengers who'd invited me to jump the queue after I'd had to sit on the floor of the waiting area; and on and on and on. I really have to struggle to remember a time people in other countries didn't go out of their way for me. And here I was back home, and far from helping the foreigners--minors at that--my fellow Americans, citizens of "the greatest nation on earth," couldn't even be civil.

I guess I'm old-fashioned. I don't even take the elevator unless I'm collapsing with luggage. Heck, I don't even take the escalator unless I'm in a hurry: remember that thing called exercise? But if I do, I always let others on first, even if they don't seem to be in a hurry, or have a lot to carry, or look lost or scared or young or old or foreign.

In a way the worst of it wasn't how the Chinese students might have felt; it was the physical revulsion with which the American girl regarded the Chinese guy for daring to infringe on "her" space, and how put-upon the guy looked, as if living in the richest country in the world is some terrible, terrible burden. So I can't help asking where we've gone wrong: how can we be so prosperous and yet so miserable?