The Road: Comparison Review of the Novel and the Film

The road is a story written by Cormac McCarthy, and it is about a post-apocalyptic story which a father and son are trying to survive after the world fall due to nuclear activity. In 2009, the novel is been made into a post-apocalyptic film directed by John Hillcoat. The story and film are both focusing on the journey of the father and son’s survival in the destroyed world. Even though the novel and film are based on the same story, but there are still differences between them. For me, I think that the film did a better job for expressing the mood and the storyline better than the book does, since the film can use both visualize and sound to help the reader feel the hard situation the father and son are in, and the mood of the scene in the film.

For the film, I think it expresses the feeling and emotion better than the novel does. The film made the expression more clear by adding lots of flashbacks, which make the reader feel better about what the father is thinking about deep in his mind. For example, in the novel, the mother is rarely mentioned two times and is not clearly introduced to the reader about the mother, but in the film, the mother appears in the flashback for lots of time. This not only let us know the mother more but also let us know the pain father feels from losing a wife. One scene that is different from the film and novel is that in the film, the mother just walks away and suicide and die, while in the novel, the author describe the scene about how the mother suicide brutally. With flashback with visualizing, I think it gives the reader a better understanding of both physical and mental characteristic for the character in the story. Even though the movie didn’t show how the mother suicide, but it still gives more detailed information about the mother than the novel did, which shows how the film expresses the feeling and emotion better than the novel does.

Secondly, the film includes more imagery and visualize, which made the reader know more about the setting and background of the story. For example, the film includes the vision for the landscape, and how the sky is mostly dark. In the story, the landscape can be shown visualize to the reader, and the sound can be helped to express the mood of the scene. For example, the landscape can be depicted with dark color, since the world has fallen, and the sky may be gray. This lets the reader feel how hopeless the father and the son is, and how there is no more hope about the world. The sound which helps the reader understand more about the dangerousness may be the sound of people screaming and running when cannibals were hunting them. With the sound effect, the reader can feel the emotion of how the father and boy are feeling, and how they were serving not only in harsh condition but also in a dangerous condition. With visualizing and sounding, the film can express the scene better than the novel does since the reader can just watch the setting and gloomy background and feel the mood.

In conclusion, I think that the film did a better job for interpretation of the story of “The Road”. With lots of amounts of flashback which gives the reader more information and more understanding about the story, it let the reader get to feel more about the story. With directly visualize scenes and the support of the sound effect, the reader can feel the gloomy and hopeless of the world, and the dangerous the father and the son are in.