‘The Road’ a chilling, dark post-apocalyptic tale

“The Road” surely will be less traveled than this month’s other version of the post-apocalypse, the blockbuster hit “2012.” But John Cusack’s special effects display was a stupid, soulless theme-park ride. By complete contrast, in adapting the respected Cormac McCarthy novel, today’s evocative cinematic nightmare is one of the most intense character studies of 2009. It’s also beyond chilling — scarier in its convincing depictions of hell on Earth than any of the cheap, salacious slasher pictures that pass for horror these days. No fantasy villain could be more horrible than a cold gray planet devoid of color, foliage, animals, hygiene, food and civilization. The few remaining ravenous people — mostly roving gangs of men with guns — rape and then eat what’s left of the unarmed.

How do you survive? Why should you want to survive? Can you cling to hope and remain steadfast to your basic morality as a human being even under the most primeval and harrowing conditions imaginable? That is the challenge facing a quietly heroic everyman (Viggo Mortensen) and his boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

Set after the end of the world, which comes with a flash of light and little other explanation, “The Road” transcends the specific external circumstances facing the two main characters: The desperate journey of a father and son to not only withstand a dying planet and try to find to a plausible place to live but to do so while preserving dignity and faith.

The script by Joe Penhall, as directed by John Hillcoat (“The Proposition”), alludes to God or a higher power as “a flame” that must remain lit no matter what. That is what compels the unnamed, archetypal father in this allegorical odyssey to continue on — to protect, teach and sacrifice for his child even after the wife/mother (Charlize Theron, appearing in flashback) is gone.

Mortensen and Smit-McPhee transmit such beauty and a power in their relationship on behalf of their characters. It is their work as actors together, and the integrity of the filmmakers, that keep this from being some exploitive series of action set pieces about eluding cannibals.

Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce take small cameos in this gripping but thematically downbeat parable, which may be daunting to rank-and-file multiplex patrons. “The Road” deals in spiritual hunger, but also in extreme examples of physical starvation just as we prepare to pig out this Thanksgiving weekend.