In case you haven't heard, Cormac McCarthy sold his new screenplay, The Counselor, to the folks who brought us The Road and Tree of Life.
They're looking for financing now, but the details about the script so far indicate that it is to be another drug war film involving a lawyer, with two women in strong supporting roles.
I finally saw THE ROAD. They did a bland job of it. Robert Duvall is fine actor, but they should have left McCarthy's own dialog in the film. Instead, they paraphrased everything and it came out not only bland but pointless compared to the novel.
When Eli says that we'll all be better off when everyone's gone, the wonderful comic irony of the line is something you wouldn't think would be cut out of the movie. But it was.
In the book, the man and boy have very little. They have not yet come upon the cache of canned goods. They meet Eli who is more spiritual, funny, and threadbare than the Eli in the movie by far. They argue over whether they should give him any food or not. They finally decide on the reflective, human side and give him food and a blanket.
Then they are rewarded by karma or by God or by their own sub-consciousness. They find the cache.
The movie reverses the plot and ruins any such interpretation of the movie. And that isn't the only thing they got wrong.
I read the novel before it was published. My review of it then can still be read at Amazon--the spotlight review there--and it is the book that will linger forever in my mind.
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