How can a difficult read be an easy one? It can be easy because the difficulty is compelling and seductive, because ‘difficult’ does not mean ‘obscure’, because difficult can be worthy of admiration. A few days ago, when I saw John Hillcoat‘s The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy‘s novel of the same name, I had not yetContinue reading “‘The Road’ and the Centrality of Love for Existence”
Tag Archives: post-apocalyptic worlds
The Post-Apocalyptic Zone of Moral Instruction
During a Facebook discussion in response to my post yesterday on The Road, my friend Maureen Eckert wrote: I am never sure what to make of “post-apocalyptic porn.” On the one hand they seem to be thought experiments about the “State of Nature.” On the other, they seem to tend to express exaggerated exasperation withContinue reading “The Post-Apocalyptic Zone of Moral Instruction”
John Hillcoat’s ‘The Road’: Bleak and Unsparing
John Hillcoat’s The Road is a faithful cinematic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s bleak vision of a post-apocalyptic world. It is almost unrelentingly grim because it is unsparing about the bitter truths of a world in which food and morality are both in short supply: existence is a mere step up from the eventual slow deathContinue reading “John Hillcoat’s ‘The Road’: Bleak and Unsparing”
Samir Chopra 