The Road

Turk and I saw The Road today. We'd both read the book, which is utterly harrowing; almost unremittingly bleak. Cormac McCarthy managed to find new depths in a sub-genre that most writers, critics and readers thought had been mined out by 1960. It brought me to tears more than once.

How could such a book be filmed?

I have no idea. Yet it was done: the movie is a faithful, well-cast, emotionally painful adaptation of the book. They did add a musical soundtrack...but the film would have been too terrifying and heart-wrenching to watch without it.

At the end, credits roll by on a black screen with a soundtrack behind it, a very ordinary series of sounds that, suddenly, are impossibly poignant. For me, the film was a reminder of just how short, how tragically short, "forever" is.

Go see it. Bring a hankie.