OK, there’s nothing worse than those people who bang on about how movies are not as good as books.
They say no filmmaker can ever match the detail and the richness and the characterisation, that no director could possibly visualise a world to compare with the one flickering before their bulging mind’s eye as they turn the pages…
Those people do not understand cinema.
They don’t get that the oh-so-perfect blend of images, acting, music and cutting can surpass the printed page.
They fail to recognise that the great directors are not directors at all: they are alchemists.
Or so I thought until I found myself traversing John Hillcoat’s The Road.
Faced with post-apocalyptic landscapes rendered in prose so rugged it seems McCarthy has hewn his words into the faces of mountains, all Hillcoat can do is desaturate his palette.
Offered characters so ravaged and ravenous you can taste the dryness of their mouths, feel the throb of their joints, all Hillcoat can do is ensure Viggo goes skinny dipping to display the tines of his ribs.
Presented with mental anguish that runs deep and dark yet cannot stain the human soul, all Hillcoat can do is introduce a plaintive voiceover.
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