“The Road” proves that you can make an apocalyptic movie without zombies. The film is an unrelenting yet landmark work of science-fiction because, for one, the viewer is so caught up in the moment, in surviving with the two lead characters, that it hard to tell it’s even sci-fi. That said, this is the most dramatically rich (and oppressive) films of its kind and no short-cuts are taken. The film is true to the story and the characters. Sometimes so much so that it’s hard to handle.

John Hillcoat (who made the equally bleak Western called “The Proposition”–a film I also love but am afraid to watch again) has fashioned this story based, of course, on the great Cormac McCarthy novel, with a very loose plot structure (the family is moving south for reasons unstated in a world destroyed from unknown reasons) but in a lot of ways the less we know the more we are able to feel the frustration of the characters. And that’s what’s it’s all about! When it comes to the central father and son characters the film is focused and that’s where it counts. With a strikingly haunting Great Depression era face, Viggo Mortensen is brilliant in his struggle to remain “good” when such moral qualifiers no longer exist. Yet he persists. He is not perfect and he is not profound, he just.. is and I admire the modesty and minimalism in Mortensen’s grounded performance. We may not know much in the way of context (the flashbacks to his past life are unnecessary) but we are able to connect with the spirit of the character who does not even have a name; we understand what he is doing and why he is doing it even if we, along with him, can’t articulate it. Sharing every moment of screen time, the man’s son, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, doesn’t ruin the movie and that’s one of the highest compliments I can pay to a child actor.

The film’s production design is perfect. The muted and drab earth tones capture this dying world. And I don’t just use the term “dying world” as a metaphor. The world is shutting down. The temperature is dropping and life is on its way out. Hillcoat and his team capture exactly that. When the two characters finally reach the “blue ocean,” they take one look at it and the father says “I’m sorry it’s not blue.” There you go! Trees are skeletal and often keel over on screen and in a particularly effective design choice, do so off screen too as we often hear creeks and thuds in the background which startle us at first but become a fact of life soon after. Vegetation is withered and brown. Earthquakes reign down upon man like an angry God is shaking the world loose. Animals are nonexistent (and they’re lucky for it). The only thing left is what remains of humanity, full of scavengers, thiefs, blind men and cannibals (yes, cannibals). Mad Max had it easy, this is humanity. If it’s any consolation there is hope, but in typical McCarthy fashion it comes as such a great price that there might as well not be. But there is.

“The Road” is one of the best post-man movies I’ve ever seen. I love that, after having a kid himself, McCarthy’s way of celebrating fatherhood is THIS devastating world. Still, I consider myself a student of apocalyptic fiction so my point of entry into “The Road” is through the genre more than the author and accolades. On that basis its a beautifully realized movie that, refreshingly, lacks irony, sentimentality and Will Smith.

Grade: A-