The Road — Movie Review
The Road, a movie released in 2009 featuring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron is a difficult movie to watch, and I couldn’t stop watching.
The movie based on the best selling novel by Cormac McCarthy takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a father and son travel south, desperately seeking food and safety in a new world that no longer provides either.
Survival is the top priority now. Kindness and humanity was erased when the first nuclear weapons hit. Rape, murder, and cannibalism are the new norms.
As I said, it was a difficult movie to watch. As a father, I had to question whether I was prepared. Was I prepared for the worst case scenario? Was I prepared to ensure my children will survive? These questions were difficult because I know the answer is no.
In this world where everything needed to survive is for sale right down the or one click away on the internet, myself and a vast majority of humanity has lost the skill of survival. Hunting, gathering, and navigating the world without GPS is a lost art.
Several years ago when an electrical failure blacked out the entire San Diego region, no business accepted debit credit cards. Me, my wife and young son had no food at home, we were planning on going out to dinner that night. Instead, we shared a bag of Cheetos for dinner. Thank God the blackout only lasted less than a day, otherwise we would have been in big trouble, and it would have been my fault.
As The Road shows, the new world is a dangerous place. The father is a good man, his son is better. As they make their way through a land filled with cannibals willing to resort to any evil to survive, they somehow hold on to their goodness.
Would I?
I claim that my morals are important to me, but would I keep them? When I feel the first pangs of hunger will I begin to rob, steal, or maybe worse to survive?
This question seems to be an important point to this movie. Will you survive? More importantly, how will you survive? There are two trains of thought to take when the bad starts to happens.
- Survival is the pinnacle, all other thoughts and values are secondary or none at all.
- Keep your humanity or you become inhuman. Once that happens, survival doesn’t matter.
Watch the movie. Answer the tough questions. Are you ready? What option will you choose? Does it matter?
