While much of the focus on The Road is used to highlight the supposed ‘environmental message’ of the film and the novel on which it is based, I was left wondering if in fact the apocalypse levelled on the fictional world was not more akin to the great devastation we so nearly faced during the Cold War. During The Road I was often reminded of that icon of the 1980s The Day After, and left the cinema wondering what that the latter film might have been if shorn of it’s propaganda (“we’ll make it, though it’ll be tough”), and humanity. I’ve also made a note to try and find it on DVD.
The similarity between the two films is of course the nuclear winter, and the key difference the willingness of humans to band together in the face of catastrophe. My memory of The Day After – seen in the eyes of a teenager scared of the holocaust, as we all were – is of people who have barricaded themselves in a hospital removing the mattress-screens once the radiation has dropped, and of the gradual decline due to radiation sickness of some of the individuals unable to hide. These scenes are of hope, that some will survive once the danger has passed, despite the misery they’re victim to. The Road creates none of these pretences whatsoever, and instead drops the two main characters into a world without ethics, morals, or future. There is nothing that can save them, and instead we watch perhaps the last two vestiges of our humanity picking their way through the utter devastation of a dying biosphere.
The question I was left with circles around why the author chose this world for his vision of our future. And most often I see his settling on the natural selfishness of man. The looming environmental catastrophe he is attempting to warn us of is one of our own making, and one which we propel ourselves towards despite the warnings of experts. We are told again, and again, that that future is an illusion, and if it is not, it is too expensive to change , and so it is that we continue to push ourselves towards an abyss. Contrast this message with The Day After, where it more or less a momentary ‘accident’ that almost destroys us, one that can be averted by the awareness of people that this future does not need occur. To reinforce the message the main character in The Road, the Father, often looks backward to the days of plenty, a time when he was surrounded by items, luxury and comfort. Food was cheap, colours abundant, light falling upon the face of an angel, his wife. The author is in this way both allowing us to see what it is we have now, while creating a contrast to what will be if this present is not changed. There is no way to turn off and dismantle the rockets. To live, we must leave the Garden, or the Garden will be no more.
Utterly harrowing.
What made this gut-wrenching message more prescient is a TV series of the 1970s we were made to watch in school (by a lazy social studies teacher). Connections was a major influence on a younger me, depicting as it did the holistic intertwining of science, art, and industry in the history of Western Europe. In one episode Burke, the host of the show, presents a world without a key resource, electricity. He begins in a modern, post-industrial city, and works his way out to the rural hinterland, the source of our other need, food. In a very simple description Burke made it very clear that you and I are entirely dependent on the network we support, and which supports us, and clearly demonstrates how simple it would be to collapse it all, with the flick of a switch. The Road epitomises that collapse in the most horrifying way possible, by turning humanity on itself in the search for food.
So what did this leave me with? A mild depression? Yes. A fear for the future, and Chef Du Plunge in particular? Absolutely. While Left and Right equivocate about the impending natural disaster we face, I sit and read of the collapse of civilisations throughout history, and take comfort in the knowledge that collapse is normal. All civilisations end, and almost always due to environmental exhaustion. The only question is whether the end of the Oil Age will bring so much damage to humanity that we regress to the horror depicted in The Road, or whether it is something more akin to the optimism of The Caryatids. And only time will tell.
14 May, 2010 at 8:28 pm
Hang on. Does it actually say anywhere in the film of the book what the cause of the apocalypse is? I confess I didn’t see an environmental message in it at all.
14 May, 2010 at 9:47 pm
nope. no reference in the film. in fact, i found that confusing because the reviews of the film i recall all refer to “environmental disaster”.
in the first few scenes the Father recalls “an explosion of light, and fires”, which strongly suggests atomics.
that said, the outcome is the same. a dying biosphere due to dust – easily indicated by the constant grey skies, rainfall, and storms.
but i think this was deliberate. he used the nuclear winter idea to accelerate us towards the out-of-kilter biosphere, one unable to sustain complex multi-cellular life.
14 May, 2010 at 10:47 pm
I enjoyed the film of The Road, and like you I found parts of it quite wrenching. It didn’t shirk from depicting the realistic horrors of the complete breakdown of civilised society and the rule of the strong over the weak. The all-encompassing fear that was the only constant of day-to-day life was vivid and powerful. Jeez, it wasn’t half a downer in places, but I salute them for showing it without sugar-coating.
I had to hold the Simpsons image in my mind to cheer me up afterwards – the one in which Burns turns off the nuclear plant out of spite and Springfield descends into darkness. In the space of 3 seconds the entire town is being looted and people are throwing TVs through shop windows. That’s my kind of apocalypse.
Have recently bought the complete set of the original Survivors series from 1975-77, back when dystopian collapse fantasies seemed to rule the bookshelves, thanks to John Wyndham and others. (Did the recent BBC remake of Survivors come to NZ? Not bad, but not as good as Terry Nation’s original series). Haven’t re-watched the original yet, but I have strong memories of the impact it made on me when it was re-run (or perhaps run for the first time) in the late 80s days before TVNZ was commercialised and stopped showing cool stuff.
James Burke cast a long shadow for me too. I loved his series The Day The Universe Changed, which was one of the contributing factors to my decision to study history at university. Pity the material I encountered there wasn’t quite as intriguing! You can re-watch those programmes on Youtube btw, in 10-minute instalments.
15 May, 2010 at 7:47 am
hmmm… anything by terry nation is good.
i’d better look that series up.
15 May, 2010 at 8:25 am
[...] reviews the film adaptation of The Road. I have no real desire to see it but I found this point interesting: While much of the focus on The Road is used to highlight the supposed ‘environmental message’ [...]
15 May, 2010 at 9:29 am
You should check out the 1980s BBC miniseries Threads as well. It’s a fictional documentary about an industrial town in Northern England (near Sheffield, maybe), before and after a nuclear attack. As harrowing as The Road, in many ways, but it sounds much more like Connections in its focus on the social apparatus — given the similarity in the title I expect they would be very similar indeed.
29 November, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Well I remember Robert Duvall’s character saying something to the effect that he knew this was going to happen and many said it was a scam. This sounds suspiciously like and indirect reference to global warming. I’m not trying to sound paranoid but I am confident the liberal writers wanted to sneak this in on purpose.