Above the Fire

"This one is about Doug, a widower from the Boston area, and his seven-year-old son. They are trying to deal with their grief—the loss of a wife and mother—by going on a sojourn to New Hampshire, and suddenly the world kind of ends. No one really knows what has happened, and they can’t communicate with the outside world. There seem to be fires that are happening down below, and they are unsure of what to do. Has there been a political disaster? Have nuclear bombs dropped? What is going on? They go further into the wilderness, essentially to keep away from whatever is happening where there are more humans. They must survive through this year—the man and his son together. Now I should say that their survival is not like The Road by Cormac McCarthy . They have food, they have shelter. It’s more, ‘If it’s just you and your seven-year-old kid, what are you teaching them, if you don’t know what’s gone on? How, when someone new comes along, are you interacting with that person?’ Again, it is very psychological and emotional. That is what I liked about it. It is a quiet, post-apocalyptic novel, although we do not even know if it’s post-apocalyptic because we don’t know what’s happened. Robert Fass is fantastic playing the father and son. You do not want to overplay being a seven-year-old. It is very subtle what he does. You just go along the emotional journey with him. For me, hearing his voice and hearing what the father was feeling, Robert just did that perfectly. He captured those intense emotions in a quiet way that didn’t outstrip what the words were doing, but really sucked me in. Dark, but not horribly dark. He and his son have been put up with this big challenge, but they are also trying to work through their grief. They are able to get past that grief, in a way. He gains as a character throughout the challenge here as well."