People’s fascination with a post-apocalyptic world has produced a wide variety of books and movies based on the subject. The classic Australian film The Road Warrior starring an impossibly young Mel Gibson remains the Gold Standard of world-gone-mad, car-crashing survival-at-all-costs tales. Too bad the prequel and sequel, Max and Thunderdome failed to be equal.
Actor/Director Kevin Costner has also made two “what if the world blew up” movies, Waterworld and The Postman.
Now that the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men has won the best film Oscar it is certainly only a matter of time before a movie of The Road (2006, Vintage Books) McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning story of survival on a charred and hostile Earth, goes into production.
McCarthy’s vision of America the Destroyed is exceptionally bleak. At least Waterworld’s Costner got a cool catamaran, a tan, and the sultry sex appeal of Jean Tripplehorn. Even Gibson got a sawed-off shotgun, a bitchin’ booby-trapped hot-rod, and a dingo. All the main characters in The Road have is a blue plastic tarp, debilitating lung disease, a broken down shopping cart, and a well-deserved, hyperactive paranoia. Unexpectedly though, The Road is strangely uplifting.
The realism is breathtaking. McCarthy’s economy of language is masterful. The result is a story of journey, hunger, survival, death, fear, and a father’s devotion that tattoos images on the brain. It’s a day-to-day description of satiating the simplest, minimal needs under the most terrible circumstances, yet clinging to hope in the face of hopelessness. It’s a frightening, suspenseful book that’s impossible to put down. Like the main characters in The Road you must keep going even though the temptation to give up is there on just about every page.
Like a lot of life’s journeys, a big part of you really doesn't want to go, but you do—because, ultimately, you are better for it.
Obviously, not all great books translate easily into movies. But, if this one does, Mel’s Mad Max could be in for some serious cinematic competition.
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