And by the sounds of it, he’s seen a finished, or much more completed cut than the one screened to test audiences in November of last year, which was met with mixed results. Let’s put aside for now, the fascinating portrait he paints about the picture (which sounds rather fucking amazing; more on that later). What’s interesting to note is how Dimension Films’ Bob Weinstein might be messing with things a little.
Don’t gasp, it’s only the trailer and hell, studios have to sell films by any means necessary, we get that. However, it sounds like the trailer they’ve chosen is going to be filled with speed, action and possible pre-disaster scenes that are not really emblematic of the film.
Let’s put it in Chiarella’s words [ed. the article is unfortunately not online yet]
“When Bob Weinstein rolls those trailers [the writer is shown multiple versions], each one assumes the predictable arc of a story compressed to its essence. There is a speed to them that the actual movie — which I saw before seeing the trailers — does not possess, or seek to possess, an urgency that feels manufactured. The music is pulse pounding and urgent, driven to create absurd expectations of action tin a movie that quietly elicits worry about the relative friability of the invisible paths that exist between people and what they need. Still, every utterance, every cry for help or hand clasped across the mouth of the boy to suppress a sob, is a fair-enough emanation from the heart of the movie.”
Ok, so accentuating and exaggerating. Fine, fair game, every studio does this, right? However, somewhat troubling to the writer is the news footage in the trailer that shows, the pre-apocalyptic world. Anyone who’s read the novel, knows part of the striking brilliance of the book is that no pre-apocalyptic world is ever shown and in fact, whatever has turned the world into a gray, ashen wasteland is never explained.
In fact, it is explained on the Weinstein’s own “The Road” page as an “unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and most life on earth.” Chiarella posits, and rightly so, that this is not only antithetical to the novel, it runs completely contrary to the film. In fact, the footage is not even in the cut of the film he saw.
“The odd thing is, the start of the trailer includes glimpses of a storm, panicky news footage, little puzzle pieces of the world before it ended. No one — not the director or myriad producers, not the novelist or the screenwriter — had ever even hinted at how it happened until this. For someone who loves the book, for anyone who knows the story going in, this is a moment you hoped would never come.”
He says that it seems that these “metonymic references and presumed military conflicts…for now will stay in the trailer,” that Bob Weinstein seems to love. But apparently director John Hillcoat has had no hand in the creation of those scenes and moments.
“On the other side of the planet, at home in Australia Hillcoat’s been hearing about these trailers,” writes Chiarella. “We’re so conditioned by post-apocalyptic films to be centered on a big event, and they become this high-concept thing. And here there’s this total absence, this negation of explanation. We have to stay with that. So yeah, that’s gonna be a challenge,” Hillcoat is quoted as saying.
Now, we suppose we can live with Dimension shoehorning these disaster-film cliches into the openings of a trailer, but since Hillcoat has only “heard about them,” could this potentially mean they’re trying to stick them into the film as well? Total speculation on our part, but it would be unenviable and it is worrisome to read about.
By all of Esquire’s accounts, “The Road,” is a majestic, but difficult film to watch, grim, gloomy, but beyond powerful (in fact the article is called, “The Most Important Film of The Year,”; again, more on that later), but by our reading of the article, it still sounds like Dimension is worried with what they have on their hands and how they’re going to mass-market it to dumb audiences which perhaps is a very valid concern.
Update: And Chiarella seems to agree. We emailed him for his thoughts. “Weinstein’s dilemma evident,” he told us. “He clearly loves the project, but he has to make it sell. This is what his instincts tell him to do. He’s been very good at it with some excellent movies. In some ways: whom am I to argue, except just some guy who loves the book? I might have been a little disturbed that the trailer was misleading. But once the movie is in place in the culture, the trailer will disappear. Then word of mouth will be the movie’s best friend.”
Fair enough. “The Road” also features Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Michael Kenneth Williams, Garret Dillahunt and after many delays, is finally due in theaters October 16.