July 09, 2010 10:16 PM

Finally I felt I was in the frame of mind to experience the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." I have read all of McCarthy's published novels and seen all of the film adaptations. The film version of "The Road" had a meditative quality and as I watched it, I couldn't help but think how beautiful it was ... a poetic, sensitive work of art. It respected the novel. The glaring flaw was the decision to include a musical soundtrack in a story that makes a point of talking about the lack of music in a devastated world in which the story takes place. I did interpret the use of the minimal piano parts (played by Nick Cave) to deliberately reflect the wife/mother as did the "flashback" scenes where the wife/mother is playing piano but I still felt it made the power of the film weaker by its inclusion/intrusion. In this case, the musical soundtrack weakened a powerful depiction of the landscape and human spirit explored in McCarthy's brilliant novel. That exploration speaks for itself.