Filming The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Opening shots typically are the most important part of a film. They establish not only the look and feel of the entire film, but can also set up crucial themes and ideas. The Godfather had a shadowy medium close up of a man who says "I believe in America", Raiders of the Lost Arc has a silhouette of Indy making his way through a South American rain forest. Having not seen the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, I'm going to fathom a guess as how the director would choose to open his film based off the first few pages of the novel.

I would slightly change the order of action on the first page. Instead of having the first shot be the man waking up, I would choose to show the dream sequence. A long shot of the man and the boy walking into a dimly lit cave (maybe carrying a touch) hand in hand. As they enter the shot cuts to a medium tracking shot of them walking forward, before cutting to a shot of a dark lake in a room of grey stone. There is movement at the far end of the lake, as the creature raises his head and reveals the white eyes. Cut to an extreme close up on the mans eye as he opens it. The only light in the shot would be the white in his eyes. Cut to a medium shot of his upper body fumbling around to feel for the sleeping child, and he relaxes as he feels him. This shot holds for a few beats. Then cut to a med close up on the boy with the mans hand on him as he rises and falls with each breath. Cut to a long shot of the man slowly getting up from under the tarp as the lights rise from darkness to grey to slightly reveal the wooded area around him. As the lights come up, the man leaves the shot and then the shot cuts to a high angle extreme close up tracking shot of the mans home made shoes as he walks through the woods. As he walks the shot swings to be behind him as he reaches the cliff that he looks out over. As he reaches the edge the shot pulls out to reveal a vast wasteland with the road running through the middle of it.

The World of the Boy in Cormac McCarthy's The Road

The boy character in this novel was, for all intents and purposes, born into the litteral world I described earlier. While the timeline of his birth and the disaster are not explicetly mentioned, given the age of the boy it is safe to assume that he had not developed as a person in the world that we know. Therefore the father has taken it upon himself to create a less harsh world for his boy to grow up in. So the boy lives in a world where he is flooded with advice, stories and risks, and his world is in turn shaped by these experiences, especially the risks. The house that they visit about a quarter of the way through the novel in perticular drastically scared the boy. From there he is even more hesitatnt to enter locations, even though places like the bunker have proven that good things can lie behind closed doors. The boy is so consumed in the world that his father creates for him, that he is unwilling to venture beyond that world. This is most evident after the death of the father, where he is forced to abandon the world that his father created. When he meets the man who would take him in, he repeats phrases that his father had said to establish the world of the pair, like "Are you carrying the fire?" and "How do I know your one of the good guys?" There is, however, one part of the world of the boy that he himself creates, and that is the little boy. The little boy is a vision the boy sees as they pass through what is most likely Rock City Tennessee towards the beginning of the novel. Since their initial encounter, the boy asks the man on a fairly regular basis if they could go back for the little boy, or informs him that he wishes the little boy is with them. This important aspect of the world of the boy, in my opinion, is why he decides to leave the father at the end of the novel. Because while the father has created his whole world, the boy needs other children to create his own world and develop as a person.

The World of the Father in Cormac McCarthy's The Road

The man in the story is responsible not only for the boys life, but for raising him as well. Therefore he creates a world for his son, and by consequence the boy is his entire world. This is referenced specifically in the book, the man and the boy are "each the others world entire."It is, however, hard to argue that he creates a world for himself. Because he is creating the world for his son, he has to stay grounded in the literal world. There are countless moments in the novel where the man knows that they have to take a risk, but the boy is scared. The man has to be in the literal world in order to know when a risk is necessary. Also he has to be attentive to the world around him at all times in order to size up every situation. If he had been lost in an imaginary road when he felt the arrow whiz by his head, he might not have been able to react quickly enough to save his sons life, or have the concentration to locate and shoot the guy with the flare gun. But he does try very hard to create a world that is enjoyable for his son. For instance there are the stops at the waterfall, the coca-cola in the grocery store and the flute that he gives the boy. However, he can not afford to live in this world, as it could have been potentially devistating for them both.

The Literal World of Cormac McCarthy's The Road

The world constructed by Cormac McCarthy for his novel The Road is not to different from your typical post apocalyptic world from movies or science fiction. What is consistent throughout the entire novel is the general greyness of the entire world. He constantly uses words like "hazed" "smokey" "shadowy" to describe the landscape that the boy and the man travel through. Additionally the word ash is used more frequently than any other adjective throughout the novel, again implying a general greyscale feel the the whole world. The way that McCarthy creates the world is through a lot of adjectives. When there are descriptive passages in the novel, he tends to use a mix of run on and fragmented sentences, almost to make you think in terms of shots. He uses quick piercing sentences to show tension as the man and the boy approach a house: "They approached slowly up the drive. No tracks in the random patches of melting snow. A tall hedge of dead pivot. An ancient birdsnest lodged in the dark wicker of it." While in the more enjoyable and less tense scenes like the waterfall, the sentences are much longer: "It was a waterfall dropping off a high shelf of rock and falling eighty feet through a grey shroud of mist into the pool below." By doing this the reader gets a longer time to imagine the waterfall in the most vivid way possible, which relaxes the tone and gives the picture a more mellow feel. Overall his use of different sentences gives the reader different options for interpreting the scenery in their own minds. However, because of the consistency in the adjectives used by McCarthy, the world that the reader envisions is as grey as every other readers.