What? Apocalypse again?

As I write this post, the second sperm-donor-comedy is opening in theaters. (The Switch with Jennifer Aniston--don't look forward to a post about it.) The Book of Eli (2010) opened earlier this year as the second post-apocalyptic road movie, after The Road. Next to The Road's stripped-down elemental narrative of survival, The Book of Eli, with its action staging, dynamic protagonist and twist ending feels like Mad Max Goes to the Twilight Zone.

All of these films owe something to Sergio Leone, who took the vast and varied space of the American West, so dramatic and poetic in John Ford and turned into a blasted heath for an army of angry Lears to rail on. Strong, reticent heroes, reluctant to turn to violence until absolutely necessary, like Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott gave way to gun-toting sadistic psychopaths. For Washington and company, it's shoot first and ask questions later, strange for a character whose chief function in life is to safely transport a copy of the Bible. Sure, we had bible-thumping psychos before, most notably Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter. But he was the villain and an obvious hypocrite. Denzel is a sympathetic hero.

And what's with the religion thing? In a John Ford western, the church and the schoolhouse arrive with womenfolk, the end of the frontier, and the beginning of family life, stability, order. In Eli, the Bible introduces further mayhem, jealousy and covetousness.

The movie is one of those Sixth Sense deals that has an outrageous twist at the end that changes everything that went before it. Sixth Sense played by the rules. A second viewing reveals taht it never violated the story point that was revealed at the end. But although I have no desire to watch Book of Eli again to verify it, I am fairly sure that a number of the events and scenes in the movie are impossible or at least ridiculous in light of the final story twist.

It's not surprising given that this is also one of those movies that is so extensively treated in post-production--color drained, background elements CGI-ed in, that nothing in the film can be believed or trusted. And that is what is most disturbing about the fantastic possibilities of post-production CGI--nothing can be trusted, nothing can be relied on. If live-action film becomes no more convincing of its own reality than a fully-animated film, then why bother with it at all?

Father to son

It seems apropos to write about The Road (2009) immediately after Wild Boys of the Road. They share mood and setting--males traveling through a hostile environment, fighting for survival, forced to keep moving, struggling to preserve relationships.

The natural comparisons are to Children of Men or even Zombieland, road movies of survival in a burnt-out, post-apocalyptic world. Director John Coghill spoke of avoiding Mad Max references in the film's iconography. But by one-third of the way through the film, the comparisons I was thinking of were Chaplin's The Kid and De Sica's Bicycle Thieves.

All three films are stories of flawed and desper men trying to convey what they know of life to their sons under terrible conditions. All of them want their sons to know that, no matter what is going on now, life is good, and that you were brought into this world to enjoy it and to bring joy and goodness to others. I think that might be a description of what it is to be a man.

Viggo Mortensen and his scene-partner Kobi Smit-McPhee are astonishingly convincing. Mortensen's progress and degeneration provide a structure for what could have been a meandering or relentless film, and his commitment to the story is unquestioned. After A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, is there any doubt that Mortensen who can be the linchpin of important and difficult projects?

A few other random observations. The title, The Road is shared with Fellini's early masterpiece about circus life, known here by its Italian name, La Strada. "The Road" in show business means the hinterlands, traveling to entertain the rubes. "Hit the road" also means to get away from the routine of modern daily life. "The road" used to be associated with romance and adventure. Was that an intentional irony by McCarthy? Or is this another Road to Perdition?

The film is sad, but what is even sadder is that its vision of a destroyed world was achieved without a lot of special effects. The landscapes in the first part of the film are those of Mt. St. Helens, and much of the film was shot in the Rust Belt, especially parts of Pennsylvania devastated by the loss of America's industrial might. Giant plumes of smoke in the background were taken from footage of the World Trade Center collapse and a ruined landscape with large ships beached on land was taken from post-Katrina footage. It's sad that the entire end of the world could be staged using the world as it appeared in 2007, without tricks or effects?