The Road: the film.

After a delay of over one year the film adaptation of Cormac MacCarthy's novel The Road finally hit the streets of NYC last Wednesday. Most impressive to me was the rendering of the post-apocalyptic world: the unrelentingly barren and silent, burnt and burning, vast, empty and destroyed landscape was unnervingly realistic. High marks can also be given to the narrative's verisimilitude to the novel - an unexpected satisfaction. The acting: Viggo was thoroughly convincing as a desperate survivor in the dying world; the boy significantly less so.

If the film narrative mechanically paralleled the novel, in a cathartic sense it may not have, and thus is realized the prediction that the story was unfilmable. This take on the film adaptation is articulated well in this LA Times review:
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/la-et-road25-2009nov25,0,4633283.story

Another interpretation of the character's journey in The Road can be imaginatively experienced in the Google Earth construction posted on the Cormac MacCarthy forum. From the post: "If you are interested, a guy created the path from The Road on Google Earth so you can zoom in and see the path they take. The link is http://www.googlelittrips.org/ You may have to click on the High Ed button and then search "the road cormac" Then download the file which is pretty small and then open it. You have to have Google Earth as well." 

For interesting discussion of topics, themes, and other tangents relating to MacCarthy's work visit the forum at the CMacC Society's page: http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/forums/