The Others (Spain/ France/ Italy/ USA, 2001)
Directed by Alejandro Amenabar
Starring Nicole Kidman, Alakina Mann, James Bentley, Fionnula Flanagan

In my review of The Secret Garden, I said that many films which are held up as British classics are the result of a collaboration between British and international talent - in this case, a Polish director adapting a British book from an American screenplay. It is fitting therefore that the tradition of old-fashioned English and American ghost stories should be most fittingly upheld by an international director, which brings us, (super)naturally, to The Others.At its most basic level, The Others is a stylish and evocative throwback to the classic Victorian ghost stories, which in turn formed the basis for 1960s horror classics like The Haunting and The Innocents. Like the latter of these films, The Others has its roots in Henry James' renowned novella The Turn of the Screw: both revolve around children whom, it is suggested, can interact with a world beyond our own. There are also hints of The Shining in the use of panning shots throughout the house, and in several of the music cues. Alejandro Amenabar borrows from Wendy Carlos in his use of deliberate anti-climaxes following by deep terror.The Others takes place on the Channel Island of Jersey just after the Second World War. The setting is interesting due to the cultural differences between the Islands and mainland Britain, and the fact that they were occupied by the Germans (although Nicole Kidman is keen to point out that none of them made it to the house). Amenabar exploits these differences to quickly create an unsettling, 'other-worldly' feel: we recognise all the hallmarks of 1940s fashion and architecture, but they are so precisely and readily positioned that something doesn't seem right.The film evokes the immediate post-war period very effectively. Although the majority of shooting was done in Spain, the house feels British in every detail. The ornate and elegance furniture, the empty, echoing halls, the pale but elaborate costumes - it is almost too perfect in its recreation of wartime Britain. The film has a very pale visual palette to underscore the age of the characters' environment and the sense of personal and national exhaustion. Javier Aguirresarobe, who later shot The Road, contrasts light and dark to such an extent that it almost feels like sepia, hinting at the chilling revelations lurking in the old photographs.Because of its affection for classic cinematic ghost stories, The Others does contain a fair number of familiar elements. The elderly housekeeper may be much nicer than Mrs. Danvers, but she still has ulterior motives and secrets to hide. In a further reference to Rebecca (which itself borrowed heavily from Jane Eyre), one of the key plot twists concerns the contents or inhabitants of an attic. The use of fog as a meeting point between this world and the next borrows not only from John Carpenter's The Fog but from gothic horror: Susan Hill's The Woman in Black is set in a house cut off by marshland, and the title character first appears after the fog comes in.With so many familiar elements in play, there comes a point where the film has to make its own mark on the genre. It takes a while for it to do so, but it eventually achieves this through both technical proficiency and the substance of its storyline. On a technical level, The Others is very creepy. Amenabar uses the pale cinematography and period dressing to play up all the creaks and shadows (and there are a lot of shadows), and he achieves two really big jumps: one with the door closing on Nicole Kidman's face, the other involving the old woman and the cupboard where the children are hiding.Like all great ghost stories, The Others makes you question whether or not you saw something, and what that something might have been. It shares with The Haunting and The Innocents the device of a central female protagonist who, in one interpretation, has gone completely round the twist. The film establishes Grace as the audience's guide, using her strict values and sense of conviction to unnerve us. During the opening act, her character is set up as someone completely orderly and in control, in contrast to Nell in The Haunting, who was always a little on edge. Hence when the strange noises start to occur, we experience either the act of someone going mad or Grace's genuine shock at seeing her values so deeply questioned.Whereas The Haunting explored possible scientific explanations for the strange goings-on in a dark house, The Others is primarily concerned with the role that religion plays in dealing with or understanding the world beyond this. Grace remarks early in the film that she "doesn't like fantasies": she is a staunch Catholic who takes literally both the teachings of the Bible and, even more so, the Church's views on purgatory. The film's view of religion is mixed - faith in the afterlife is rewarded, while the dogma to which Grace clings turns out not to be enough.When Grace's religious outlook interacts with those of her children, The Others drifts closer to the work of Guillermo del Toro, who directed his own ghost story in The Devil's Backbone and would later produce The Orphanage. An underlying theme of del Toro's work is that of children being able to connect with another world, with some underlying force which adults have chosen to ignore or dismiss outright. When Grace's children say that they don't believe all that they have been taught about God and the afterlife, it's not simply a reflection of a lack of faith. It is a sign that they see the truth, the horrifying magic which Grace denies or avoids; as Roald Dahl wrote in The Minpins, "those who don't believe in magic will never find it".The Others is very smart in tricking us over where the boundaries between the living and the dead lie. In light of its final twist, the reunion between Grace and her husband (Christopher Eccleston) gains an added layer of poignancy; the joy and subsequent strain of reunion becomes overladen with grief and despair. Like The Shining, the film suggests that portions of individuals' souls are imparted into a location or building which has significance in their life, and that after death their spirit returns, as if one's life were recurring in eternity with all by way of meaning plain to see.The Others is also boosted by its great performances. It finds Nicole Kidman in her prime, following up her excellent work in Moulin Rouge! the same year. She has often been criticised for being brittle, but here it is entirely appropriate that she be highly strung: her character is very close to Deborah Kerr's in The Innocents, and she delivers a performance which is almost on a par with that. There are also great performances by the two child actors: Alakina Mann is terrific as the impetuous Anne, and is matched beautifully by James Bentley, who later played Geoffrey Rush's son in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.There are a couple of flaws with The Others. Although its ideas are interesting and thoroughly explored, it remains just a little too generic: it doesn't develop or advance the genre in the way that del Toro's efforts have done. It is a little too long, being very slow at the beginning and predictable towards the end. And in the scenes involving the medium, it treads a fine line between creepiness and Blithe Spirit, with the deadpan delivery of the medium's observers threatening to tip us over that line.The Others is a stylish and creepy retuning of a classic ghost story. In spite of its flaws it still delivers a satisfying amount of substance and shivers, which have not decreased in the decade since its twist was first revealed. Kidman and her child co-stars are on scintillating form, matched by solid support work from Eccleston and a 78-year-old Eric Sykes. Though it has since been eclipsed by The Orphanage, it still has the power to chill.

Rating:
Verdict: Chilling if a tad generic

The Proposition (Australia, 2005)
Directed by John Hillcoat
Starring Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Richard Wilson, John Hurt

In any kind of ideas-driven film, there has to be a balance between the ideas being addressed and the characters through whom such ideas are conveyed. And in any genre film it's easy to get the balance wrong because of the availability of stock plots and characters - something which is especially true with westerns.

At one end of the spectrum, we have There Will Be Blood - a film with substance pouring from its every orifice, but only one convincing character through which this can be channelled. Because no-one else can rival Daniel Day-Lewis, none of the ideas about imperialism, economics and religion create anything like the emotional impact they should. At the other end, we have The Proposition, a western with many rich performances from a very well-chosen cast, but which is ultimately a little too straightforward in its execution.On the good side, The Proposition does a very good job of demonstrating just how hardy the western genre is, showing how its conventions can be applied to any environment with the same effect. Until we first hear Guy Pearce's Irish lilt or Ray Winstone's throaty London growl, we could have sworn that we were back in the Wild West. In throwing us off so cleanly in its opening section, the film amply demonstrates how the familiar trademarks of westerns are not restricted or confined by geography, any more than the ideas which such films attempt to address.This hardiness is cemented by the central performances, which take the various stock characters and adapt them to their new surroundings to create a number of memorable turns. Ray Winstone's troubled Captain Stanley is the outback's equivalent of the battle-worn sheriff, someone who has seen one too many gunfights and longs for peace while despairingly mindful that it is impossible. On top of his usual gruff posturing and natural aggression, Winstone brings a vulnerable quality to the part which makes him more compelling.The other performers are equally impressive. Emily Watson continues to be the go-to actress for delicate, sensitive female characters. She succeeds where Meryl Streep has so often failed, namely being emotionally wrought and highly strung without being showy or attention-seeking. David Wenham casts off the mantle of Faramir as the uptight, lip-curling Eden Fletcher, who seeks order and justice without really understanding what is needed to achieve either. And Guy Pearce remains one of the most underrated actors of his generation: very few people could go from the grimy, scuzzy Charlie Burns to Andy Warhol in under 12 months.With this rich cast in place, we begin to appreciate the various ideas which The Proposition is trying to raise. The setting of 1880s Australia instinctively raises the issue of imperialism, and that is confirmed by the early section of the film. Stanley constantly talks about his desire to "civilise this land" by whatever means. His clashes with Fletcher are not simply a difference in personality, but a reflection of differing attitudes to justice and 'the colonials'.Fletcher is the new boy in town and wants to do things by the book: he insists on having Mickey Burns flogged to death since the 'proposition' was not binding in law. Stanley, meanwhile, has been out there long enough to know you sometimes have to compromise, letting a small evil slip through the net so you can deal with the big evil. But he has not become entirely lost to the landscape, retaining his military dress and insisting upon turkey at Christmas.Although there is imperial politics hanging over the events in The Proposition, the focus is much more on the personal than the political. To a certain extent the film argues that the actual working nature of the British Empire was determined more by individual desire than anything more noble or idealistic (insofar as empire-building could be either of those things). Neither Stanley nor Fletcher ever mention 'the old country' or appeal to high ideals to justify their actions. It could even be argued that Stanley's motivations behind his deal with Charlie Burns was motivated out of nothing more than wanting peace with his wife (which makes his final scene all the more ironic).Coming from a script by Nick Cave, The Proposition has its fair share of grim Biblical imagery. The brutal dilemmas faced by the characters mirror various stories in the Old Testament about individuals being called upon to commit murder in the name of justice and righteousness. Charlie's act is both a betrayal of his own kin and an attempt to save it, mirroring Cain's conflicted nature when he murdered Abel in Genesis. And the level of violent retribution is worthy of anything in the book of Judges; the raping of Stanley's wife is no less repulsive than Ehud's murder of the fat king Eglon, or Jael driving a tent peg through her master's temples as he slept.Like Winter's Bone a few years later, The Proposition also has atmosphere to spare. John Hillcoat shoots the scenes of Charlie Burns' quest with a completely unfussy eye, letting the landscape speak for itself. While he does become more intrusive, he shoots conversation in close-up so that we can almost taste the sweat and feel the flies on the characters' faces. Music plays its role as well: in addition to the original score by Nick Cave and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis, the opening shootout is carefully choreographed so that the bullets hitting the brothel become a form of percussion.However, The Proposition also has the same basic flaw as Winter's Bone - namely that the story is far too thin even for its short running time. Atmosphere and score can only do so much in pulling us in, before the actual narrative and themes have to step in and take over. Sadly, once all Cave's music and sense of dread is stripped away, the remaining story is deceptively and disappointing simple, and nothing is resolved in a satisfying manner.

The sequences in the outback have great potential within them in terms of generating tension. The fearful comments of the Aborigines hint towards Apocalypse Now, with Charlie going deeper into the wilderness in search of his own personal Kurtz. But as with Hillcoat's subsequent film The Road, neither the script nor the direction allow a genuine sense of horror to build, and it becomes more about the journey itself than the meaning behind it. The scenery-chewing performances by John Hurt and Danny Huston may be good fun, but they undercut the sense of dread, making us feel like we are going round in circles.This increasing lack of dread means that the existential implications of the story are also stifled. In No Country for Old Men, the relatively simple progression of the story was married to a deep-rooted examination of the nature of evil and the motivation behind it. You therefore felt that even when something happened which was abrupt or overly straightforward, there was a reason for it. The Proposition simply doesn't have that sense of weight which makes a good western into a great one, and that makes the violence in the last twenty minutes feel all the more gratuitous.The Proposition is a promisingly decent debut for Hillcoat, who on the basis of The Road seems to be improving as a filmmaker. All the ingredients for a well-executed western are to be found in it, and in its acting and aesthetics it is well-crafted. But like Mad Max 3 before it, the film never lives up to the promise of the ideas that it raises, resulting in a film which is enjoyable but only memorable in passing.

Rating:
Verdict: Great characters, shame about the story

Escape from New York (USA, 1981)
Directed by John Carpenter
Starring Kurt Russell, Lee van Cleef, Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes

After the production problems on The Fog, John Carpenter sought to re-assert himself as a creative force with Escape from New York. Based upon a script he had written around the time of Dark Star, it promised to be a post-apocalyptic action movie with all the subversive subtext of his earlier work. But whether by flaws in its execution or by the passage of the time, the film doesn't hold up as anything more than an efficient and enjoyable disappointment.Almost by definition, post-apocalypse films don't date very well. Those that do still hold up - Mad Max, The Road, even The Bed-Sitting Room - succeed by being 'universal' in the ideas they examine but crucially vague about when or even how we got to this point in time. Most films about the end of the world are actually about the problems in present society, which can make even the best-made films dated in a matter of years. It doesn't take long to realise for instance that, if the Daleks did invade in 2150, we wouldn't still be driving Bedford vans and eating Sugar Puffs.Carpenter's original script was written at the time of the Watergate scandal, when the idea of a criminal rescuing a president would have carried a great deal of satirical bite. Had he got the money to make it when Nixon resigned, he could have had a hit on his hands which packed as big a political punch as All The President's Men. Telling that story during the Reagan years may still work on some level; turning Manhattan Island into a prison seems every bit as outlandish as the Star Wars programme. But whatever else the original script had simply doesn't gel, turning the film into something far more straightforwardly heroic, if not overtly patriotic.Like They Live a few years after it, Escape from New York is an action movie with large overtones of the western genre. Both John Nada and Snake Plissken are Carpenter's own takes on The Man with No Name, and Kurt Russell's performance is on one level a pretty good impression of Clint Eastwood. The film is built around the classic 'one last job' scenario, in which Plissken is offered his freedom to do the one thing he really doesn't want to do. There is great potential in this character, as a classic anti-hero who eschews authority and is only convinced to obey when threatened with a slow and painful death.Even considering its low budget (around $6m), Escape from New York does look like a film that was made in a hurry. To film some of the key scenes, including the aftermath of the plane crash, the crew had to sneak onto empty streets without permits at 3am, in some cases dumping truckloads of junk onto the roads to create the feeling of chaos. Even from the start the story is being hurried along, with the first 15 minutes doing whatever is necessary to get Snake into the city, and from thereon in the film wastes no time in getting him out. This is not a Chinatown-like mystery, with brooding detectives slowly uncovering a hideous truth; it is a simple, straightforward story and a race against time, and as a piece of efficient filmmaking, it delivers.This rapid approach to shooting does create some obvious continuity errors: in one scene, it's sunrise on one side of the island while still midnight on the other. But the first problem with the film is that it's so quick-fire and so efficient that you begin to wonder whether there's anything actually going on in the pauses. Although it's lost the Watergate backdrop, there is still the potential to explore a number of interesting ideas, if not enough to fill a whole series of films.

The set-up of the film, with a whole city being walled off and turned into a prison, hints at the tendency of civilised societies to isolate and shun its criminals rather than deal with them upfront and try to understand them, something which Carpenter tackled previously in Assault on Precinct 13. The unveiling of a criminal society, presided over by the Duke of New York, puts forward the notion of criminals being every bit as civilised and cunning as either their captors or the protagonist, something reflected throughout the work of Michael Mann. And the conflicts over power, with Harry Dean Stanton's character controlling the city's only source of oil, taps into the very same territory as the first Mad Max film.But as things evolve, it becomes clear that the film isn't really interested in any of these ideas. The film is like a land speed record attempt in which the driver is wearing blinkers; the object is to get from A to B as quickly as possible, and there is no chance to look around or think about anything else. Whenever Carpenter does attempt to tackle deeper issues, it's done in a half-hearted manner using imagery which is surprisingly unoriginal.

Huge sections of the film owe a big debt to Mad Max in a way which really demonstrates all that was spot on about George Miller's debut effort. The criminal gang in Escape from New York don't get enough time to establish themselves, and for all Isaac Hayes' best efforts, he's not as intimidating as the Toe-Cutter. The various street gangs (which reference George A. Romero by calling themselves 'The Crazies') dress every bit as extremely as the bikers, right down to Isaac Hayes' right hand man who looks unnervingly like Keith Flint from The Prodigy. And then there is the fight scene, in which Kurt Russell takes on a wrestler with a huge beard. It may predate the Thunderdome fight in Mad Max 3 by about four years, but there is a tonal similarity to the series in the combination of camp humour and realistic violence.This brings us on to problems with the characters. Escape from New York has more than its fair share of them, from Snake himself to Ernest Borgnine's chirpy Cabby, and from the Duke of New York to the odd couple of Maggie and Brain. But Carpenter sets up so many of these potentially interesting and quirky characters that he can't quite decide who to focus on and ends up having to kill them off in quick succession so that just Snake and the President survive. In the bridge sequence, where Cabby's taxi gets destroyed by several mines, he is incredibly cavalier about who cops it and when.This jumpy approach carries over into the performances themselves. Harry Dean Stanton is an enjoyable screen presence, and he plays Brain very well - so well that you wish he had more screen time. Adrienne Barbeau, on the other hand, seems to spend most of her time either firing a gun or walking into wide shots that show off her cleavage. Ernest Borgnine is annoyingly over-the-top, as if he were trying to cut in on every shot, and Lee van Cleef is reduced to largely scowling behind a desk. Only Kurt Russell gets the screen time he deserves, filling the empty streets of New York with his one-eyed swagger and growling whispers.There are a number of enjoyable moments in Escape from New York which make it at least partially memorable. The set-pieces involving the cars, both on the bridge and breaking through the barricade, are well-choreographed and have good sound design, so that every explosion and crunch of metal is appropriately amplified. Isaac Hayes' entrance will raise a chuckle, as he drives through the wreckage of New York in a limo with chandeliers mounted on the bonnet (eat your heart out, Pimp My Ride!). Some of the humorous exchanges do work well, such as Hayes taunting Donald Pleasance with a gun and then the latter getting his revenge at the end. And the final scene, where the crucial tape has been replaced, is quite funny.But in all, Escape from New York is little more than an enjoyable disappointment. It's a perfectly functional, efficiently made sci-fi actioner, but is nothing like as witty or subversive or thrilling as you would expect from John Carpenter. Like Mad Max 3 a few years later, there are individual scenes that work well but these are counterpointed by longer, more underwhelming sections. Carpenter completists will enjoy it, but everyone else should probably look elsewhere.

Rating: 2.5/5
Verdict: An enjoyable disappointment

Winter's Bone (USA, 2010)
Directed by Debra Granik
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garrett Dillahunt, Dale Dickey

There has always been a certain amount of prejudice surrounding festival films, particularly films which cause a stir at Sundance. Without wishing to sound snobbish, the recent output of films from said festival has been a complete mixed bag. The good or interesting efforts, like Teeth and The Killer Inside Me, demonstrate the resourcefulness of low-budget filmmakers, while The Squid and the Whale and Little Miss Sunshine are either too quirky and cute for their own good, or far too smug to be taken seriously.Winter's Bone is one of the better recent offerings from the Sundance 'stable', containing a number of interesting scenes and beautiful visuals anchored by a remarkable central performance by Jennifer Lawrence. The film attempts to explore addiction in an unconventional way, drawing on fairy tales and the work of Terence Malick to show the plight of one family in the Ozark Mountains. It's heavily flawed and narratively uneven, but there is also much here to be admired.

On the good side, Winter's Bone has a haunting visual sensibility which is enhanced through Michael McDonough's beautiful cinematography. The film was shot entirely on location in the mountains of Arkansas and Missouri, and Granik's camera really pulls you into this isolated community. The screen is bathed is silvery greys and a range of blue shades to create an air of melancholy and convey just how long everything has been here. None of the buildings look like they were built specifically for the shoots, all the roads are rocky and the vehicles are beaten-up and battle-scarred.Like Slumdog Millionaire and Precious before it, Winter's Bone has been accused in some quarters of 'poverty porn', i.e. of examining poverty-stricken individuals or communities in such a way as to belittle them to cause guilt or entertainment to the viewing public. The merest glance at the plot summary for any of these films renders this argument totally bankrupt, and that is particularly true for Winter's Bone. Instead of getting us to revel in depictions of people who are vulnerable or inferior, the film is about said individuals demonstrating strength and resourcefulness.

The film is anchored by a brilliant central performance by relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence. Several critics have compared her to Jodie Foster (with whom she is due to star in The Beaver), and the comparison is valid to a very large extent. There is the same sense of intuition, of someone who knows exactly how to play a scene without any Method-like familiarity with the situation, and whose understatement both comforts an audience and engages them in increasingly sinister circumstances. It's a strong performance of a very interesting heroine figure.Although it is staged and acted naturalistically, so much of Winter's Bone plays out like an epic poem or a Grimm's fairy tale. Like many fairy tales, our heroine has to go off on a quest, and on the way has to confront a (literal) brood of menacing antagonists, out to either forestall her or destroy her altogether. And this is not a more recent Disney vehicle, in which the plot is so formulaic that we know that Ree will survive and learn something in the process. The stakes here are very high, and very real, as demonstrated by the really uncomfortable scenes where Ree is beaten up and kidnapped.

As a treatment of addiction, the film takes a very different approach to the likes of Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, which focus very much on the personal turmoil of the characters and their escaping into fantasy. The drug element of Winter's Bone is much more incidental, something which is condemned fleetingly by several characters but which also seems to be a tolerated part of the community. There are brief hints that the substance has made Ree's mother so helpless, and Ree herself is repulsed by the drug. But there is no attempt to turn the story into a TV-movie of the week about the triumph of the human spirit; the crystal meth becomes another unseen menace, cohabiting with the other characters.Winter's Bone is also about blood (in the familial sense) and the code of silence in communities. In one key exchange, Lawrence is attempting to extract information from Dale Dickey; when she is reluctant to tell her anything, she shouts: "doesn't our blood mean anything to you?". It's a film very much about the cadence of people's voices, and what is implied by silence is every bit as important as what is actually said. We've seen dozens of films about suburban neighbourhoods in which the neighbours shun or turn on newcomers who ask questions. But few have managed to transfer this to a rural setting, and Winter's Bone deserves commendation for this.

The problems with the film, however, are every bit as noticeable as its assets. For one thing, the story is very thin, and the resulting slow pace to spread the story out makes the film seem a lot longer than 100 minutes. Like the later work of Terence Malick, it's a film which relies as much on the tone and the shape of the landscape to keep our attention as it does on character development, and there are moments where Winter's Bone veers too close to the first half of The New World, in terms of its plodding storytelling.Because the story is so thin, the most harrowing moments of the film do not carry nearly as much weight as they should. The scenes of Ree being beaten up and threatened by the townsfolk serve their purpose, even if the degree of violence is not justified half as well as in The Killer Inside Me. But the final twist involving a trip to a secret location and bones being severed somehow doesn't fit with all that has gone before. As with The Road, it's not the twist itself that is the problem, it's the execution - there's so little effective build-up that there isn't the tension needed to make it as shocking as it needs to be.

On top of this, a lot of the scenes in Winter's Bone are diverting and, frankly, a bit dull. We don't really need to see Ree attempting to teach her young brother to skin a squirrel to eat, or showing him how to use a gun to shoot the things. Scenes like this play out too slowly and distract from the matter in hand; this in turn lowers the level of suspense and hence the twists are not all that remarkable. The mother, who never speaks, is almost a superfluous character. We understand how isolated and endangered Ree and her siblings are without her, and she makes very little impact on the events that unfold.In years to come Winter's Bone will probably be known more as a calling card for Lawrence than as a genuinely great movie in its own right. It could do for her career what Taxi Driver or Bugsy Malone did for Foster's, and on the basis of this she deserves the same level of success. Beyond that it's a decent work with an interesting slant on addiction and some solid direction from Granik. But its slight nature and troublesome execution make its hard to fully recommend it.

Rating: 3/5
Verdict: Long on beauty, short on story

The Road (USA, 2010)
Directed by John Hillcoat
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall

Western culture is fascinated by the end of the world. Whether it's a nuclear disaster, an alien invasion, a crippling virus or a Biblical flood, there has been a steady stream of artistic output surrounding the apocalypse since each medium began. Everyone remembers The War of the Worlds or Dr. Strangelove, but filmmakers have been exploring this since the invention of sound: the appropriately titled End of the World came out in 1931.

After the critical acclaim accorded to No Country for Old Men, it seemed natural that other adaptations of Cormac McCarthy would follow. And on the grand scale of post-apocalypse films, The Road is far superior to either the recent work of Roland Emmerich or Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead. It isn't a classic, nor is it without rather telling weaknesses, but it is a credible and compelling tale about family and morality, and a solid follow-up to John Hillcoat's first film, The Proposition.Most post-apocalypse films are, let's face it, quite fun. On a very basic level, the likes of Independence Day and Deep Impact do have a harmless stupidity to them: even if the story makes no sense and the characters are two-dimensional, we can be entertained by the effects and one-liners and then move on without any kind of guilt. Even the more serious works, like The War of the Worlds and the Mad Max trilogy (more on them later), have a lightness of touch so we can soak up the substance without fear of being lectured.

What distinguishes The Road is its sustained downbeat, melancholic tone. This is not a film for those who love one-liners, or appreciate a silver lining on the ever-darkening clouds. There are little triumphs for the characters throughout, such as finding the bomb shelter full of food, but these are set against the backdrop of a world which is growing colder by the day, will little about either the landscape or its remaining inhabitants which could possibly instil a sense of hope.

In terms of its lineage, The Road owes precious little to the likes of The Omega Man or the zombie movies of George A. Romero which have shaped this genre. It has none of the extreme claustrophobia of, say, Day of the Dead and precious little that could be described as camp. The closest reference point is probably Terence Malick's Badlands, since the landscape is as much a character as the humans wandering through it. Hillcoat shoots many scenes with the actors as tiny dots on an expanse of silver and grey, and the colours are so tearful they could have been directed by Ingmar Bergman.A more illuminating comparison, however, is with the Mad Max series. On paper, they are very different: The Road is a quiet, downbeat drama or thriller, while Mad Max and its sequels are supercharged punk westerns with plenty of noise. And The Road does have some advantages over George Miller's work, particularly when it comes to the role of children. Where Mad Max 3 couldn't blend all its ideas together and ended up just ripping off Peter Pan, The Road is very clear as to what Kodi Smit-McPhee represents. As the film wears on it becomes clearer that his childlike nature, whether you call it innocence, naivety or anything else, could be the key to his survival. Certainly the cynical paranoia his father adopts doesn't always work to his advantage.

But somehow, despite its lighter tone and cheeky sensibility, the Mad Max films seem to have more to say than The Road about how life would exist after total disaster. What's interesting is the relationship between cause and effect in both films, and how the differing emphasis between the two makes all the difference. In Mad Max 2, the cause of the apocalypse is made very clear at the start: we know that humanity has descended into chaos through a global war, which caused a fuel crisis and thereby mob rule. Having clearly identified the cause, the effects seem like a natural progression from this singular idea or event, and the whole film hangs together like a well-oiled machine of social philosophy.In The Road, however, the cause of the disaster is never explored or identified; the fact that there is no mention of, say, solar flares or asteroids suggest the destruction was man-made. To some extent this is good, in that we focus on the father and son rather than any back-story, and from a thematic point of view it is one of the best environmental films ever made. But because the cause is never established, or even hinted at for very long, there is nothing we can link to the effects. That is, there is no explanation offered for the precise actions of the characters beyond the need to survive, and hence the horrors that the pair encounter seem increasingly generic.

The script does not allow for enough genuine horror at what is occurring, nor is there any real sense of escalation to give the impression that the characters' predicament is getting more than slightly worse. There is so much forewarning about the presence of cannibalism and the like that when the characters encounter it, it is never quite as harrowing as we expect it to be. Viggo Mortensen's narration is largely unnecessary (like it is in Malick's films), and despite the film making a fair deal of his character's sickness, it does feel like a jump from walking to death's door.Putting these problems aside, there is much about The Road that deserves recognition. Thematically, it is a great exploration of distrust and paranoia, and the way in which both will consume those who live by them. Mortensen believes that every character they meet has been following them and is therefore a threat, while his son seems to only want to help the people they meet. Their relationship raises the question of whether there is any point to rules or morality in a world where organised versions of both have collapsed. The death of the father, and the irony surrounding the family that find the son, suggest that morality is worth maintaining, even when it is difficult to justify.

Several brilliant moments really stick in one's mind. The death of the father is a real tear-jerker, with both Mortensen and Smit-McPhee playing things completely naturally and coming across as highly convincing. Mortensen's is the death of the old way of living, and the child does not know what the new way holds or what shape it will take. The other great moment is the section involving Robert Duvall, almost unrecognisable under heavy make-up. His performance is the best in the film, delivering lines with unmatched tenderness and sorrow.The Road is not a complete success, and as McCarthy adaptations goes it is beaten squarely by No Country for Old Men; certainly the Coens' script is a lot stronger and darker than Joe Penhall's. But for all its problems, the film is a very solid portrayal of "a world in trauma", in the words of Hillcoat. The cinematography is unyielding but beautiful, Nick Cave's soundtrack is heart-wrenching, and the central performances are very strong. It isn't an easy watch, and purists may complain that some of the tone has been lost. But it is still a worthwhile viewing experience, for those with the right amount of patience.

Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: Equal parts rewarding and underwhelming