The Road... I am guilty of having this film for a few months and I only just watched it. The simple reason being, it's a quiet film and my house is rather noisy!
It's set in a post apocalyptic world where every day you are fighting to stay alive, and the search for food and shelter is equally hard. This is a film that shows the dark side of every human being, the violence, selfishness and sheer cruelty that mankind is capable of and it it only because of society's laws, that we haven't already become like that but I tell you this it wouldn't take much for us to resort to eating each other.
The lead, Viggo Mortensen hardly puts a foot wrong, he clearly shows the characters desperation and loss- a brilliant actor!! I like the way the film splices in moments of their lives before, it shows just what ordinary people are capable of. I also enjoyed how it also showed the not so courageous side of human nature, when you see all the people who have taken their lives in despair. It also shows the powerful and destructive power that fear has over us, because in the end it is fear that drives the survivors to do what they are doing, the fear of running out of food is what has driven people to let a starving old man starve instead of sharing your food with him and it is fear and suspicion that drive people to hurt each other.
The little boy represented the little bit of humanity that still resides in us all. It was he who wanted to share his food with the old man, and it was he who went back to the starving naked man, that Viggo's character had a confrontation with. The end of the film leaves the little boy with another family, the female eludes to the fact that the boy is special, he may be special because he hasn't been tainted by the greed of humanity and still has compassion. The ending leaves you thinking, which I like in a film given that there are so many "fluff" movies out there, this was gritty and emotional. 5 out of 5 for this. Anyone who want to be challenged should watch this.
Brothers... Another film that I had for moths and only just watched. It shows the effect of war on soldiers and the small fact that you never really stop being a soldier. The movie did the typical war movie thing, where they show the soldier with the small kids before to try and humanise them. They did a good job in showing what really goes on in war, and that not all of them are robots, this was shown when Tobey's character and another soldier were captured and you saw the desperation and panic in the soldiers behaviour. The interesting things was how they demonised the "insurgents", and what I found rather funny was how his little girl described the enemy, and her answer was simple " the men with the beards". This just shows how the Americans have been drilled and bombarded with these images and now that is all they can think of.
It shows the treatment of the soldiers afterwards, Maguire's character had to do horrible things in order to be reunited with his wife, that obviously left him traumatised and what was there response.... throw him in the looney bin and pump him with drugs. That is one of the reasons why America as a country is full of so many homeless people, because they have no idea how to deal with mental illness. This film gets 3 1/2 out of 5, it was a smart take on war and the leads were excellent, they showed the hurt, anger and despair. A good film.
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