The Road (Film)

[hexgrid]

I would be interested in hearing anybody debate that, either for the book or the movie. Is there more to it than just hunger, sickness, cannibalism, pain and death? Does it bring anything new to the "after-the-end" genre?

No, there isn't much in the book besides hunger, sickness, cannibalism, pain and death. But this complete lack of romanticization is exactly what sets apart from most of the post-apocalyptic genre, IMO.

That said, I'm not sure the book needed to be a full novel. There are couple hundred pages too many of nothing but looking for food and running away.

 

[Mallus]

Does it bring anything new to the "after-the-end" genre?

It's beautifully written. That right there sets The Road apart from most post-apocalyptic fiction. It also manages the neat trick of being uplifting and utterly hopeless at the same time, which is to say, to it's credit, the book is both unsentimental and highly sentimental.

It's a lot like a story about a person coming to grips with being in the last stages of terminal cancer, except the dying patient is all life on the Earth.

 

[Crothian]

I'm not sure how it is beautifully written. I don't see it as uplifting at all either. It was about on par with On the Shore or Kult.

 

[Mallus]

I'm not sure how it is beautifully written.

I think many of the sentences --and fragments thereof-- are lovely.

I don't see it as uplifting at all either.

It's a novel about the possibility of good --as embodied by the love between the father and son, and at the end, by family that 'adopts' the son-- even in the face of the inevitable extinction of the human race. Though we can't be saved, there is, in us, something worth saving ("we carry the fi... never mind").

 

[Mark]

It's a novel about the possibility of good --as embodied by the love between the father and son, and at the end, by family that 'adopts' the son-- even in the face of the inevitable extinction of the human race. Though we can't be saved, there is, in us, something worth saving ("we carry the fi... never mind").

I saw the movie Friday and believe that it captures this quite well.