The end is near! Well...maybe. Whether or not you believe that 2012 is the beginning of end, we thought it’d be interesting to bring you two apocalyptic flicks that have some striking similarities and contrasts.
The Road is based on a Cormac McCarthy Pulitzer prize winning novel by the same name. A lot can be said about McCarthy and a few of his other novels that have been adapted into films like No Country for Old Men (2007) and All the Pretty Horses (2000). The Road shows a nameless father (played by Viggo Mortensen) and son only referred to as “the Man” and “the Boy.” The details of the recent past are equally non-descriptive. A cataclysmic disaster has turned the world cold, dark, and full of ash to the point that there are no living plants or animals. Most of the few human survivors have resorted to cannibalism as a means to live just a little longer. It is through these ruthless villains and the treacherous terrain that the Man and Boy must travel in the hope that the southern coast might sustain some life. As the odds of survival are stacked so high against them, the Man contemplates the futility of their striving. Their love for each other gives them every reason but they just don’t have the means. So why keep in the face of the inevitable? Because as the Man assures the Boy (and maybe himself), “This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don't give up.”
Children of Men is set in the not-too-distant future of 2027 where human beings face global extinction. The pandemic isn’t disease, nuclear war, or a giant meteor, but something much more subtle: infertility. The youngest person is now 18 and the world is falling apart- not because children are needed to maintain order, but because without them, what’s the point? To put it simply, people are angry and anarchy is the dominant political persuasion. We follow our disillusioned hero, Theo (played by Clive Owen), as he tries to help a young woman, Kee, get to the coast in hopes that she holds the key to reversing mankind's extinction.
Both films show the world as we know it dying with a whimper rather than a bang. They also show lone heroes striving to get to the coast as their last desperate attempt at hope. While the Man and Boy in The Road hope for the meager basics of survival in an uninhabitable world, Theo and Kee in Children of Men hope for a reason to survive in a world devoid of a meaningful future.
