Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Road


I went to see this movie last week and was deeply affected by the experience. The movie is almost as sparse as the book - almost as harrowing. The movie form requires a little more explanation than the book and loses something because of this.

Post-apocalyptal fiction fascinates me. I remember Stanley Roach, my literature professor at university as an undergraduate and an incredible woman - telling me every generation had to rewrite Hamlet and also had to place itself at the end of the world to ensure its immortality.

I believe this to be the function of post-apocalyptal fiction - without us there is no future. I'm curious about the savagery of these futures we now envision, although I know we are as savage as we are humane.

I think, for me, this is the passion of The Road - the absolute and unconditional love of a father for his son.

We don't hear much about such a thing in these days - we know about maternal love; we know about the power of the patriarchy but the deep and simple love of a father for his son has been lost and we are less for it.

The closest we get is the pieta created in a photograph after 9/11 when a fireman cradled the body of a man he had pulled from the wreckage.

When I find that image I will add it to this if I may.

I'm also deeply touched by the concept and the imagery of the pieta - as my grandmother said when my mother died and she was destroyed by her loss. "parents just aren't meant to outlive their children."

That pain is implicit in every pieta I have ever seen.

This one is mine - made when I was mourning the destruction of my own self .

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