There many things a person will learn while watching ‘The Road’ – among them being that it’s not a great date movie and it’s not got many insights on the upcoming fashion season
GREAT EXPECTATIONS: they can make (or break) your enjoyment of a film. Which is why, sometimes, it's nice to go into a film entirely blind, without having seen a trailer or read a synopsis. The Roadis not such a film.
If I told you I'd been living in a bunker for a year, without access to television, internet or mobile phones, would you believe that I had no idea what The Roadwas about? Now, if we take all those unlikely factors out and I admit that I spend 11 hours of every day online, tweet and Google constantly – when I'm not on the telephone – it would seem that my ignorance is even more far-fetched.
But I am telling the sad, sad truth. When I took my seat at a press preview of The Roadon Wednesday morning, I was genuinely thinking about fashion angles. I was wondering what the costumes might be like; whether I could use them as a reference for the spring/summer 2010 catwalks.
Because – and those of you who have been paying attention for, oh, the last two years, should steel yourselves for what I'm about to say – I thought The Roadwas going to be, well, a road movie. I thought it was the story of a couple of friends making their way across the US in the 1970s, and, in true road movie fashion, I anticipated VW camper vans and perhaps a Winnebago or two. Bellbottoms would undoubtedly make an appearance, not to mention a necessary music-and-love festival along the way.
There was no music. There was love, but not of the free-and-easy kind.
There were no camper vans, no Winnebagos, no rousing talks around the campfire at night (although there were fires, and there was a lot of night). Instead, there were varying shades of grey. The road, a 112-minute-long stretch of harsh, grey asphalt; the trees, a faded shade of fern; the sea, a thundering mass of whirling grey water. In all, an oppressively stark vista.
And, make no mistake, The Roadis not a short film. Nor is it an excessively long film, but in this monochromatic vista, time begins to lose meaning. Shifting in my seat after an hour, I wondered when – and indeed if – the credits would begin to roll.
It had become clear quite early on in the film that there would be no sartorial redemption in this post-apocalyptic vision, and each moment brought a new kind of discomfort. Cannibalism, suicide, more cannibalism: The Roadis a stark look at how humanity fares when humanity is dead.
Needless to say, it is not a date movie. Nor is it an afternoon-at-the-flicks-on-your-own movie. It will not cheer you up. It will not inspire you to write sonnets, nor to finish an opera based on the works of Byron. It will crawl under your skin and, unless there is a quick and unforeseen thaw, you will emerge, blinking, into an eerily familiar snow-covered landscape.
That's not to say that it's not very good; with an average of four stars all around it's definitely in the critics' good books. The most important lesson to take from this experience is that forewarned is forearmed. If you're expecting Thelma & Louise, you're in for a nasty, grey surprise.
Two hours of desolation later, I have little to write about in the way of fashion, an immense fear of men with sharp incisors and a strong desire to watch Upfor the third time. My verdict? The Road: An unnamed father and son on the road to nowhere, and not a bell-bottom in sight.
