Oscar talk for Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’

Good news from the Venice Film Festival for fans of Cormac McCarthy, regarded by many as the finest living writer in the English language. The Australian director John Hillcoat, best known for his videos with fellow Aussie Nick Cave, has made a great movie of McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 novel The Road, sticking closely to the original which, given the bleakness of the plot, is quite something.

The last McCarthy novel to be filmed - No Country for Old Men - won four Oscars when it was filmed by the Coen brothers in 2007. The talk in Venice after The Road's premiere was that it could do equally well at next year's Academy Awards. Viggo Mortensen as The Man, 12-year-old Kodi Spit-McPhee as The Boy and Hollywood veteran Robert Duvall, barely recognisable in a cameo role, were all picked out for special mention.

The Road tells the story of a father (Mortensen) and son (Spit-McPhee) journeying through post-apocalyptic America. Dressed in rags and pushing their only belongings in a shopping trolley, they are heading for the coast, though they have no idea what awaits them there. They have only a pistol to defend themselves against the few lawless people left on earth.

Hillcoat, who shot the film in rural Pennsylvania and in post-Katrina Louisiana, is also being talked up for an Oscar, though he will have his eyes on the festival's Golden Lion in the short-term. His friend Nick Cave provides the haunting score.

Not surprisingly, while the reviews are mainly excellent, the Hollywood media are not predicting huge business for the film at the shopping malls. "The film is more suitable to critical appreciation than to attracting huge audiences," the Hollywood Reporter says diplomatically.

Screendaily.com reports: "There is so much in this picture, from dread, horror, to suspense, bitterly moving love, extraordinary, Oscar-worthy art direction and a desperate lead performance from Viggo Mortensen which perfectly illustrates the wrenching desperation of parental love. But its hopelessness will make The Road hard going for general audiences." ·