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<\/a>Jason wrote (and you can find other comments beneath the original post here<\/a>):<\/p>\nI personally like the book, and like McCarthy. I\u2019ll agree with you that it is an incredibly bleak world, but there are themes in this book (not sure about the film) that Catholics can relate to: the love of the father and son that rises above the nihilism of this godforsaken world; the sacrifice analogies withing the Father\/Son relationship; the discussion of morality (the son wanting to help other survivors while the father wants just to survive); and keeping the spark of hope alive.<\/i><\/p>\n
Yes, it seems absent of God, but I do believe you can see the book\/film as a bleak answer to the question \u201cWhat does the world look like when God is absent? And what takes His place?\u201d the answer is nihilism. It is a cautionary tale in that sense.<\/i><\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take the merits Jason imputes to the film, one at a time:<\/p>\n
The love of the father and son that rises above the nihilism of this godforsaken world<\/i>\u2014I have written elsewhere<\/a> that, because I have two daughters, I am a sucker for father-daughter stories. Since my father died<\/a> a year ago, I am also, frankly, a sucker for father-son stories\u2014which I guess just makes me a sucker. In fact (didn\u2019t mention this the first time around) I went to see \u201cThe Road\u201d because I expected to be moved by its father-son story. I was not. Maybe Mortensen is unable to move audiences; maybe the boy actor was chosen only because he looks so uncannily like Charlize Theron (shown as his mom in flashbacks). Maybe the screen connection just doesn\u2019t crackle. But I think it\u2019s more than that. There is no value<\/i> for which father and son are striving together, except the ocean, and the film shows that to be without redeeming value. Further, there is no hope <\/i>of the fire or whatever they say they are carrying being transmitted to the next generation. (If you think the boy is going to marry that little girl at the end and become another Adam to her Eve, you\u2019re not counting for the cannibals.)<\/p>\n The sacrifice analogies within the father\/son relationship\u2014<\/i>Sorry, Jason, but this alone is just not enough to warrant my two hours or $9.50. I\u2019ll just pull down the Bible from my shelf (free!), and reread Abraham and Isaac.<\/p>\n The discussion of morality<\/i>\u2014The son wanting to help while the father only wants to survive is, admittedly, an interesting character difference. But in the world, the cosmos, given us by the film, the only value is survival. There is no hope, there is no redemption. I wonder whether there can even be morality in such a world.<\/p>\n Keeping the spark of hope alive\u2014<\/i>Hope, as Father Luigi Giussani (probably others) teaches, is only real or at least durable when founded in faith, a faith that is founded in experience, in fact. Given nothing in which to have faith, there can be no objective hope. A glimmer that one might survive tomorrow, maybe, but ultimately nothingness, death, obliteration. I think Jason\u2019s most challenging point is his last one:<\/p>\n You can see the book\/film as a bleak answer to the question \u201cWhat does the world look like when God is absent? And what takes His place?\u201d The answer is nihilism. It is a cautionary tale in that sense.<\/i><\/p>\n First, I think it would be a better \u201ccautionary tale\u201d if God\u2014some belief system that arcs above the human level\u2014were even posited by the film. The film decidedly does not<\/i> say what the world would be like without God, because the film never mentions God (except as an imprecation muttered by Robert Duvall).<\/p>\n Second, and to me more important, and this goes back to my statement that my criteria for judging art have changed radically since I became a Catholic\u2014For art to be worth the effort of creation and worthy of the name art, <\/i>I think it has to draw us to a new state of ourselves. That\u2019s why so much in the media these days is not art, but entertainment: It only reinforces our own passivity, our suggestibility, our appetites. Premodern art\u2014from Homer and Greek tragedy to Dickens and Hugo\u2014described dire conditions and states of being but it always (right?) gave us something positive to contrast them with. It gave us something better than our lives, as normally lived. Dante showed us hell, but he also showed us heaven.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Road\u201d only drags us down\u2014Where? To despair. I, for one, will do my best to avoid such \u201cart\u201d in the future.<\/p>\n
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