Road to Perdition


directed by Sam Mendes
written by David Self, from the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner
starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Tyler Hoechlin
USA, 2002

C+

I used to go to the movies with my dad much more often than I do now, and I would feel the sweaty weight of guilt and an awkward tension for dragging him to escort me to R-rated indies like Sexy Beast and In the Bedroom. The very idea of films outside the central Hollywood sphere was an intimidating swamp he was forced to trudge through with me (of course, he trudged obligingly). I suppose he chalked up the absurdity or dullness of the films to their low budgets, and was curious as to how I could sit through the torture; I guess he ended up concluding that Ben Kinsley and Sissy Spacek were no longer as famous or valued as they used to be if they were stuck making cheap cinema for the art houses. I didn’t see Road to Perdition, Sam Mendes’ swanky belated-Father’s-Day delivery, with my dad, but it made me want to, for a minute, just so we could share some schmaltzy reflection. But the movie’s depiction of the Father-Son connection is as frustrating as it is heartening, and certainly no better or worse than In the Bedroom’s own representation, because, despite shards of emotional nakedness, it never tries to achieve the honesty that would present us with a challenge – some meat to chew – relying instead on movie conventions of the tough Man of the House detached from his kids trying to claw back into a relationship. It would have guaranteed me no guilt or tension with my captive escort, but it also ensures a puny emptiness, occasionally filled by the fleeting sentiments of a Father’s Day card.

The movie lets you down because it gives you hope before giving way to Mendes’ taste for pastiche. Perdition is just as romantic a view of life and existence as his 1999 American Beauty, but it’s not as high on all the dreams of redemption. The inevitability is there but the momentum isn’t, as if Wes Bentley’s hippie drugs aren’t having the same effect; the antihero’s revelatory soul-cleansing is boring and bored. This time, you can feel the air between you and the screen and the people on it, even though what made Mendes’ Oscar-winning debut a sturdy, sublime entertainment was its ability to immerse us, and make us realize ourselves, in the comic-book atmosphere. And this time, Mendes is bringing a comic book (excuse me – graphic novel) to the screen, with a tone that’s almost deadeningly serious. The gist of the story is pretty much the same: Mr. Father Figure (Tom Hanks’ 1940s murderer replaces Kevin Spacey’s ‘90s suburban sinner) is doomed but must save his offspring (Tyler Hoechlin’s innocent instead of Thora Birch’s misfit) from falling into the same moral traps he did, and just as he reaches the finish line for redemption, he is forced to meet his fate. Ah, all those sweeping Greek gestures!

Yet cinematographer Conrad L. Hall seems to know something the confident, talented, and young Mendes doesn’t: that he can mine that friction between our image of “picture books” as a child’s medium and the grandiose tragic subject matter, and the collision of that tragedy and its inherent hokiness, for creative energy. So while the movie is photographed like a stunning period epic draped in mahogany, with a cast of characters made up mostly of Irish American assassins and a few roadside saints, there are many moments when you can see through the frame to the storyboard, to the illustration that could have inspired it. There seems to be a hint of Vittorio Storaro’s Dick Tracy in it, and, indeed, a great history of movies of all genres, which I seem to want to believe was cheekily slipped in past Mendes’ nose but, for all I know, was his own intention. For Mendes is nothing if not deliberate. Perdition practically chokes in the grip of his fist.

Back from American Beauty’s Academy Award-yielding cinematographer job, Hall finds himself framing and lighting Paul Newman not as the cowboy stud of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but as a slightly feasible, and leaner, stand-in for Marlon Brando’s Godfather. There is a deeper correlation, however, between Hall’s work here and on American Beauty than his 1969 Oscar victory with Butch Cassidy because, in the sometimes humorous (as when slo-mo is used arbitrarily) but often hip visual and audio tricks, and all the forced symmetry, Mendes’ hammy cartoon quality is again captured and reinforced. As if pointing to firm stylistic criteria in Mendes’ filmmaking, the first shot of a family meal and dining table has immediate connections to American Beauty while possessing its own unique set of dysfunctions, and climactic death is a surprise to the audience because it, as in life, comes out of suddenness, out of nowhere. One of Mendes’ (and now Conrad Hall’s) strengths is that interplay of outrageousness and realism.

Though his integrity has always made him a little invisible and he may not be taken as seriously in our movie culture as Method-bred Newman or the devalued Jennifer Jason Leigh, it is Tom Hanks who gives the most touching performance. Some mistakenly call his role as a hit man a great departure when here he is more like the Hit Man With the Heart of Gold, nevertheless doomed to a Catholic hell, involving his son in crime while simultaneously trying to shield and salvage him from unforgivable sin. The lead role is actually a bit too anemic and the on-screen chemistry with Hoechlin seems set for failure, but there are quiet moments that work very well, and it turns out that the sappiest scenes are actually the truest in the film. I am speaking particularly of one in which the son asks his father why he acted “different” around him and always seemed to favor the nicer, sweeter brother; after days of robbing banks and committing crimes together, like a father-son Bonnie and Clyde, the buildup of restrained melodramatic heartache is finally realized. Stringing together immaculately tragic threads on favoritism within our biological and chosen families, the script (written by David Self) finally comes to the traditional, underwhelmining conclusion that blood runs thicker than water.

Mendes’ cinematic fetishism isn’t enough when it doesn’t nourish the story or the feeling, like it somehow did for American Beauty, which revolved around the excitement of a stage director discovering the possibilities of filmmaking. When you scrape away the upscale glamour and remove the fedoras, you end up with a stunted version of American Beauty, the same story and the same style of gimmickry, now no longer willing to give the fast-food pleasures, no longer benefited by the strange masochistic joy the audience received in seeing how truly screwed up and funny we are when our truths are stretched. Only glimmers of the new film transmit and allow these quirky truths, emotions, or even notable response. It’s pretty art with no soul, not even a real pop one.

By Andrew Chan [JULY 27, 2002] 1