"The Road" by Jesús, Mario & Xiao

Jesús, Mario and Xiao 4ºESO B

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Table of contents 1.

Introduction​……………………………………(page 3)

2.

Synopsis​……………………………………….(page 3)

3.

Characters​…………………………………….(page 6) 3.1.

Mario​…………………………​(page 6)

3.2.

Jesús​…………………….......​(page 6)

3.3.

Xiao​…………………………..​(page 7)

4.

Conversation​…………………………………(page 9)

5.

Poster​………………………………………...(page 10)

6.

Trailer​………………………………………...(page 11)

7.

Conclusion​…………………………………...(page 12)

8.

Bibliography​………………………………….(page13)

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1. Introduction: In this project we are going to talk about the film ‘The Road’ by John Hillcoat. We’ll be analysing it in multiple aspects. Each one of us will describe a concrete character.

The reason we chose this movie is because the concept of post-apocalyptic movie where there is no zombies or anything similar but people who changed their mind about viewing the world seemed really interesting.

2. Synopsis: The Road is a 2009 movie directed by John Hillcoat starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. It is based on the Cormac McCarthy’s homonymous novel. The movie talks about the survival of a father and his child in an post-apocalyptic world where people has turned into either bandits or cannibals. They will face many dangers in their way to find a secure place to spend the rest of their life.

The main theme in this film is the survival of a father having to take care of his child at the same time he teaches him how to survive whereas he is very young and doesn’t really know how things​ ​work.

The conflict is mostly a ‘Man vs. Society’ one​, where the protagonists have to fight the remaining people that survived the apocalypse, same as them, and became cannibals and bandits. This amount of people remaining form, in some way, a new society full of this kind of people. It also can be considered as a ‘Man vs. Himself’ since the protagonists have the survival instinct that rules over all and sometimes this causes a conflict when this collides with the protagonist’s moral values.

The movie storytelling goes straight forward but there are periods in the past that are told using flashbacks to concrete aspects of the story and add personality and depth to the father and son’s story. During these flashbacks the father acts as a narrator giving his point of view about the events that occurred in the past, he also gives his thoughts of the actual situation at the beginning of the movie. On the other hand, the movie doesn’t have a narrator excluding this occasional flashbacks.

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The soundtrack is almost nonexistent and it fits into the movie’s silence. The few times that music plays is in sporadic times to emphasize the tension or other feelings the movie wants to empower using this very few songs. For example: the piano is used in countable times where the plot talks about the father and mother’s past as it represents the nostalgia with its sound.

The movie is set in the north of the USA presumably. The only time we get a concrete location is when a map is shown to represent the entire place where the protagonists are in. It is easy to assume that the map shows a part of the northeast coast of the USA. The protagonists want also to go to the south because it is warm there whereas they’re looking to go near the coast because they thought that there was still hope in the sea. It is set in a contemporary time after an apocalypse but we can’t say a specific date.

The main characters are the father and his son: The man is an old man, father of a young child of whom he’s taking care. He has very tough moral rules so that he’s capable of killing other people for his own safety and his son’s safety. He strictly follows these principles of self-defence and he doesn’t question them at any moment because he thinks that’s what has to be done. This attitude is shown all along the film where in some scenes he feels no pity for others and seems like he has lost almost all his humanity.

The son is the father’s counterpart, he is young and innocent and he doubts about the things his father does as he doesn’t have the age to be able to understand his father’s acts. He is full of hope and his father tries to teach him how to survive but the son keeps refusing to be as cold as him. His innocence is shown the same way as the father’s, when he does something with the purely purpose of survival, the son doesn’t see it right. This clearly shows how the movie wants to contrast both visions: father’s and son’s.

The movie has a slow rhythm and it doesn’t reach the climax until almost the end of the film because all the rest is a build-up for it. This climax is defined with the father’s death, and all tension is focused on this event​, and all the moments that the father was fighting for survival, even though he knew that he was going to die sooner or later. The film has an open end, because the next day after the man ​dies, another man finds his son and he closes the movie watching the family and this leaves an 4

open end where we don’t know if he decides to go with them or go away and stay alone.

This movie is mostly a drama, it has some action scenes but not enough to be considered as an action movie. It relies on the suspense the movie transmits to immerse the spectator into it and ​makes the action scenes even more dramatic. The movie has a slow pace and it uses a lot the silence and quiet all along the movie to enrich the themes treated. It is a war film in some way; there isn’t a real war going on but we can see the new society formed as a war of the humans among all of them.

​ ​^John Hillcoat, director of the movie.^

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3. Characters: Mario (the mother): The mother is interpreted by Charlize Theron. She is the father’s wife and she’s seen in the flashbacks that unveil details of the past of the father and the son. She is a mother who gives birth to a boy, the son in the movie and afterwards the apocalypse happens leaving the earth almost in ruins. The father, her and the son stay at home for a long time but she thinks that is no way to live and that they’ll be killed sooner or later by someone. She wants to end it and kill herself and her son but the father refuses to let her do it since they have to stay alive and find a better place. I cannot say exactly why Charlize Theron was chosen for this role, I think she was chosen maybe for her acting skills and because she fitted the aspect of the character the director had in mind.

Jesús (the old man): The old vagabond is an old man who looks for food. He can't see well, and ​we think that he is sick, because he limps and he often coughs. This character appears when the man and his son find him when they leave the bunker. After this, the kid gives 6

him some food, and then they have dinner together, but the next day,”he follows his own road”.

The actor who performs the old man is Robert Duvall who is a very good american actor and director. He participated in many films like “The godfather”, “The godfather 2”, ”The judge”, and many others. He won an Oscar in 1984, and won an Emmy, and four Golden Globes.

Xiao (the son): The kid (interpreted by Kodi Smit-McPhee, who has participated in many other films, like ​X-Men: Apocalypse [Nightcrawler], Slow West [Jay Cavendish] and he is working in ​The Solutrean, coming in 2017). We think that he is an important character in the story (shares the protagonist’s role with the father), and because he has a psychology that we consider so interesting. He is an innocent boy living in a cruel world and trying to survive, but his psychology complicates everything, because he 7

wants to help other people, although he has to sacrifice essential things like food, clothes, water… Unless his father was with him, he would probably die​s helping other people… But, in the late time period, we can become aware that the boy has matured, but he stills conserves his “innocence”. After all, he is just a kid.

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4. Conversation: Time the scene occurs in the movie: 1:08:00 The darkness covered all we could see whereas the orange fire lighted our nearly visible faces. The kid was calmly sleeping with his head backed on a rock covered by a small couch he always carried with him. The old blind man and I were looking at how the fire consumed itself over and over again until I coughed due to my sickness.

The man looked at me with his almost blind eyes and said: -​You alright?

I looked at him baffled at first but then I turned my sight normal again and responded briefly: -Yes, it’s just a little disease I got.

He hummed and looked back at the fire. Suddenly I got really interested about him, I don’t know why but I asked him about where he came from: -What are you doing here? Did you use to live around here?

He looked at me as if I ​had ​asked him if he liked human flesh. After a while he seemed he had cleared up his mind.

-No, I used to live in Seattle, teaching young boys that would do nothing but ignore my English classes, but my wife insisted on coming here when we married because of the weather and because we needed ​some ​time out of that damned city. The idea was nice but when we came here it was all the opposite of what we thought—the man chuckled—. In Seattle it rained all day, just like in our everyday life, and we thought the East coast would be all sunny and happy—He looked up as if he was trying to see the stars—. But what we only found here was death and desolation.

I wanted to ask him about his wife but it was pretty obvious what ​had ​happened to her.

-Do you ever wish to go back to Seattle?

-Do you wish to go back to your home?—He answered me back as if I had insulted him—. Because if you had a home I’m sure you wouldn’t be here.

We looked at each other for a while, no words were said. Only the fire and the wind filled the silence. A sudden feeling filled my heart, it came as always, the wish to be

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dead. I knew that this was the opportunity I needed to vent that little bug that was itching me.

-Do you wish you would die?

The man didn’t react but he let us see what looked like a small smile.

-It is foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these.

And we remained like that until we fell asleep.

5. Poster:

In the poster we can see the father and his child, both bounded by their hands, on the front of the poster to show they are the protagonists. They and their clothes are all dirty, as well as the landscape is desolated (we can only see a car and a column of smoke) , and that gives the feeling of a devastated world and how the movie is.

The poster uses a grey tone used to make reference of the apocalyptic world and sadness tone of the film.

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The father is holding a gun while he is staring off into space. His son seems tired, perhaps due to the long and hard walk. In fact, they two show an expression of being exhausted, as if they were weary of all the misfortune that they have in their life on that devastated world.

On the top we can see the name of the actor who performs as the father, because he is a famous actor, so he can attract people interested in his job. Under the image we can see other actor’s names, but they have a less important role than Viggo Mortensen’s (because he is the protagonist and main star of the film as he is a very well known actor).

Just under that we can see the title of the film: “The road” in big capital letters so the spectator gets what the movie’s title is. The letters are in a different colour from the actor names’ letters in order not to confuse the viewer.

It also shows on the bottom that the movie is based on the homonymous novel by Cormac McCarthy. It is shown due to publicity purposes, to sell the movie alleging that the novel that the movie is based on won a pulitzer (the best award a book can win).

6. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94KcI0gLq1A The trailer makes the movie look like a generic action film which denigrates the tone of the movie itself as it has a very calm and slow tone, not a fast and dynamic one typical of an action movie. It also wants to show in some way that the protagonists have no depthness and are simple guys who are just struggling to survive. It doesn’t support the idea the movie wants to give about the protagonists which is a very different one.

If we hadn’t ever watched the movie, we would think that this movie is a typical action horror film that doesn’t have anything in special different from other movies or series like “World War Z” or “The Walking Dead”.

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This is the way we would make the trailer: First off, we would introduce the theme of the movie with slow scenes with a piano playing on the background (it also fits with the theme of the father and mother’s story), there would be many scenes of both protagonists walking through the inhospitable land.

Then, the ‘villains’ or the bad guys, in other words, would be shown and the piano then, would slowly disappear to turn into a faster paced piano song.

After that, the scenes wouldn’t be quite as fast as they are in the actual trailer. The objective is not to make the movie look like an action movie through fast paced music and editing but to try to make the spectator feel what some of the core messages are.

7. Conclusion: We, as a group, loved to do this project because it taught us about analysing the movies and expanded our vision about the way we see a movies, not for the content but for the way it is done technically.

We chose this movie because, from all the other ones, it looked different and the idea it had seemed interesting to work with.

This movie may not be a masterpiece but it truly shows that hope will always remain, no matter how bad the situation is, next to the ones we love.

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8. Bibliography: ● Abrams, Jon. ​[POST-APOCALYPTIC WEEK] THE BOOK ‘THE ROAD’ (2006) VS. THE MOVIE ‘THE ROAD’ (2009). Daily Grindhouse. 14 May 2015. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://dailygrindhouse.com/post-apocalyptic-week-book-the-road-2006-vs-movie-the -road-2009/​> ● Bradshaw, Peter. The Road Review. The Guardian. 7 January 2010. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jan/07/the-road-review​> ● Bilson, Anne. JOHN HILLCOAT’S THE ROAD: REVIEW. Multiglom. 21 March 2016. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017.

<​https://multiglom.com/2014/03/21/john-hillcoats-the-road-review/​>

● Character and quote analysis. Weebly. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://cmccarthytheroad.weebly.com/character-and-quote-analysis.html​> ● Charlize Theron. Wikipedia. 26 January 2017. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlize_Theron​> ● Ebert, Roger. The Road. RogerEbert.com. 24 November 2009. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-road-2009> ● Horrocruxess. ​Otro Proyecto Fílmico para el Gran Robert Duvall!. Taringa.

2011. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://www.taringa.net/posts/noticias/8818306/Otro-Proyecto-Filmico-para-el-GranRobert-Duvall.html​>

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● John Hillcoat. HDWALLPAPERPARK.COM. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://hdwallpaperpark.com/john-hillcoat/​> ● John Hillcoat. IMBd. 1990. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0384825/> ● John Hillcoat. Wikipedia. 10 August 2016. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hillcoat> ● Movie Gazette Picture Gallery For The Road. Movie Gazette. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​https://movie-gazette.com/gallery/16251/the-road/13686​> ● Mujer de la semana. FMDOS. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://www.fmdos.cl/noticias/mujer-la-semana-charlize-theron/​> ● The Road. 26 September 2006. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6288.The_Road> ● The Road. Rotten Tomatoes. 2009. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10009460-the_road/>

● The Road. IMBd. 5 February 2010. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898367/> ● The Road (2009 film). Wikipedia. 31 January 2017. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_(2009_film)> ● The Road en un link. El-Hacker.com. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://www.el-hacker.com/the-road-en-un-link/​> ● THE ROAD (LA CARRETERA). Sensacine. 6 November. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://www.sensacine.com/peliculas/pelicula-127661/fotos/detalle/?cmediafile=1919 4990​>

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● KMB. The Road. Frocktalk. 1 December 2009. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://frocktalk.com/?p=1778​>

● Kilua 777. The Road (La Carretera) Pelicula + Libro. Identi. *Article was published more than 3 years ago according to the page. Last time consulted: 3 March 2017. <​http://www.identi.li/index.php?topic=185933​> ● Wallach, Rick. The Road. Cormac McCarthy Works. 2008. Last time consulted: 3 February 2017. <​http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/works/the-road/​>

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