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In her 1978 essay "Fear of Movies," a blisteringly frank assessment of the nature of modern moviegoing in general, Pauline Kael writes, "Discriminating moviegoers want the placidity of nice art -- of movies tamed so that they are no more arousing than what used to be called polite theater." Invoking these words toward a disquisition on the formalist grace of Sam Mendes' classical gangster drama may seem a bit excessive, and also slightly misapplied, considering that Kael was referring to certain types of cineastes who would likely abhor this picture's innumerable blood-soaked flourishes of style (were she alive today, she might easily disagree with me). But most of the violence featured in Road to Perdition is rendered with such a cold, dainty, and deliberate tastefulness -- artfulness, some will surely say -- that it leads one to assume that the director did indeed bear these "discriminating" film fans firmly in mind when he set out so single-mindedly to manufacture a piece of great cinema. With the help of cinematographer Conrad Hall, a technician with a knack for revitalizing clichéd lighting and photographic models into a new and innovative look (or an innovative-looking look, at least), Mendes hasn't quite created great cinema, but he has at least created a very visually sturdy specimen of "nice/nasty art," a film that in its own way is more entrancingly self-contradictory than last year's Artificial Intelligence, albeit more subtly so.
Not to be too harsh, but I must admit that it is simply too easy to enumerate this picture's glaring surface flaws and label it an unqualified failure, just like that. It is also a little too easy to dismiss the whole affair as a conceited scrap of wannabe-art, although much of the challenge of assessing this film lies in gauging its sincerity. No, Road to Perdition presents a very special stylistic dilemma for anyone who isn't quick to jump to a conclusion and stick to it right off the bat. Though this may not seem to be the case, there are in fact two distinct sides to this quite elaborately minted little coin.
Before discussing the qualities of either side, however, it's important to note something of the story itself, which actually resembles in its structure Hiroaki Samura's acclaimed comic series Blade of the Immortal more than it does The Godfather. This comes as little surprise, since David Self's screenplay is an adaptation of Max Allan Collins' graphic novel of the same name, which in turn was loosely adapted from the classic manga Lone Wolf and Cub. But wherever this yarn originated from, its fusion of American folklore, Japanese lyricism, and Greek tragedy, as managed by these not-so-crafty filmmakers, never fails to appear gratingly eclectic. Though the outline of the plot lays the groundwork for something potentially brilliant and memorable, this tale of father and son lashing out against the underworld forces that have decimated their family travels a frenetic, uncertain and uneven road from one twist to another, as it tries to discern for itself what formula it's actually trying to follow.
Actually, Road to Perdition has already set off on its rocky way from Frame 1, as the first act opens with a setup that might feel somehow undernourished, almost unreal, to anyone not expecting the narrative to mutate as drastically as it does within the first fifteen minutes. To start, it introduces us to a Mafia grunt (Tom Hanks) straining to provide for his family while shielding them from the corruption of the crime network that affords him his livelihood, and tension is deftly woven at every turn after his son one day witnesses the harrowing reality of his father's dirty work. Inevitably, the local Irish-American crime boss (Paul Newman) foresees a potential threat in this child's abrupt "loss of innocence," as well as in his dubious ability to keep a secret.
Surely viewers will recognize the building blocks of a gripping domestic character drama rooted in this complication, but our storytellers scrap all those possibilities from the outset, instead dispensing the worst-case-scenario circumstances almost immediately: soon and swiftly enough, the hit man's wife and one of his two sons are exterminated.
This execution marks the first of the film's series of exercises in "good taste," although the lack of physical explicitness in this scene fails to compensate for the indifference with which Self later on dismisses these figures as mere story components. Accordingly, their deaths do not concern our main character, nor do they motivate our sympathy. They simply offer an impetus for a revenge vendetta, a vendetta that will, as expected, lead the central figure on a downward spiral to an eventual tragic self-recognition, as we were all taught in high school. In this respect, all we really need to know about wife and son is that their existence is crucial to the smooth and unfettered operation of the plot.
And then, as would be expected, father and son flee. Now Road to Perdition becomes a road movie of sorts and a period thriller. This is where it grows to resemble Blade of the Immortal, as the companions scour the countryside arranging for their retribution. Here the screenwriter has deftly squeezed in an extra antagonist, played with a nice sinister swagger by Jude Law, to lay down the opportunity for some unnecessary action violence, which turns out to be the most admirable and least ostentatious of all the film's virtues. The scenes in which Hanks and Law go head to head are all constructed with the kind of playful trickiness that suggests a ghost of Clint Eastwood poking his head through the cracks, seeping through the picture's façade of high-toned academic detachment and, thank goodness, temporarily rejuvenating our faith in the story's sense of adventure. Never mind if we've been transported into an entirely separate picture. Whatever we're watching right now, it has an edge.
However, the sacrifice we're forced to endure for this adolescent gratification is a drastic and unfortunate one: thanks to our clever story apparatus, Paul Newman and Tom Hanks remain stranded in alternate universes, sucked into the conventions of two entirely different films -- the former is relegated to conveying angst over the consequences of his abuse of power, while the latter appears satisfied working out revenge plots and dodging bullets. In due course, the second act deteriorates into nothing more than a protracted game of cat-and-mouse, vastly entertaining in its own right, but set off entirely from what Road to Perdition purports to be about.
Fortunately, Self remains faithful to his concern with filial affinities throughout all the preordained damnation sealed in a reflective Act Three. As if to apologize for the bloodletting that precedes it, a final conversation between the Newman and Hanks figures, every word of which arrives carefully marinated in significance, tries once again to call attention to the picture's tragic dimension with such grandiose proclamations as, "This is the life we chose, the life we lead. And there is only one guarantee: none of us will see heaven." Dialogue like this would've sounded resonantly “classic” if it weren't delivered so self-consciously to extort admiration from an audience. It's only one of the many instances in which Road to Perdition comes frightfully close to choking on its own inflated image of itself.
So after all the pomp is swept aside, what are we left to chew on? A timeless parable of a father condemning himself to redeem his offspring? Re-examining the film's father-son dynamics from this perspective, it becomes wrenchingly apparent that such a reading has been indicated all along, but still has not in any way been widened elucidated by the filmmakers. In effect, then, none of the character arcs holds weight. So once again, revering a tradition recalled most poignantly and most recently by Ridley Scott's Gladiator, a motion picture of potential "shallow brilliance" sinks its own ship with the gravity of its discontented ambitions. Overreaching as it is, the film itself emerges as its own specimen of tragic self-destruction.
Keeping this in mind, the reason why Self's screenplay can be declared a failure while Mendes' film could still possibly hold ground as a rudimentary success lies in the directorial consummation of the material, the style. Conrad Hall, who also collaborated with Mendes on his much more tonally flexible American Beauty, is perhaps the person most directly responsible for this picture's gorgeously lacquered veneer, as he utilizes a variety of shopworn but seemingly fresh camera implements like expressionistic backlighting, constricted color palettes, and ground-level horizontal dolly shots for a result that is, however overestimated by critics, undeniably appealing to the eye.
Of course, you could make the same observation about cinematographer Roger Deakin's work on The Man Who Wasn't There, a Coen schoolboy hommage bearing little merit outside of all its stylized fancies. The difference between the two films, however, is the overriding presence of irony in the latter one. Even though the Coen brothers perpetrate a little overreaching themselves, one senses that they ultimately aren't taking their work very seriously at all. But does Road to Perdition ever display that same sort of knowing distance from its craft? Or, in other words, to phrase my point as smugly as possible: does Road to Perdition ever arrive at its own transformative tragic recognition? That's the question at the heart of the issue.
To examine matters from one perspective, we can offer Mendes the benefit of a doubt and assume that he's worked with a full comprehension of the material's studied grandeur, as if he realizes he's taken the bombastic route but has enough confidence in his vision to articulate it as ornately as he pleases. Perhaps Road to Perdition is a wittingly mannered piece of workmanship, designed to seduce our aesthetic sensitivities and thereby call attention to the moral quandary at its core. (Sorry to sound so generic, but that is essentially, though not exclusively, what a well-stylized motion picture is all about.)
I'm forced to admit that Mendes is certainly capable of an achievement along these lines, and there exist at least a few indications to bolster this assessment. His go-for-broke implementation of rain (perhaps Hall's idea) comes to mind most forcefully, hardly noteworthy though others may consider it: the omnipresent torrents showering down on our characters are so overstated that their obviousness becomes accepted as a given -- the sheer fact of the device's obviousness becomes, well, obvious. Paradoxically, this allows the rain gimmick to transcend the status of "heavy metaphor." The filmmakers rely on it for mood and impression alone, and it works. In its deliberate, uncompromising downpour, the rain alone turns out infinitely more effective than, say, Hall's mostly trite chiaroscuro, his cheap employment of Hitchcock’s famous zoom-in/pull-back shot, and the occasional close-up of a serpentine wisp of cigarette smoke, devices that all feel so shamelessly derivative they make me want to overuse the word pretentious until I render it all but obsolete.
Sadly, these latter few examples are not the only indications that such an interpretation of the film's style can't hold water in the long run, as its glossy exterior always leads us back to the problem of a morally, emotionally, and intellectually deficient screenplay that fails to merit this indulgence. In the end, the absence of a discernable rapport between the story's father and son precludes the possibility of any personal transition in either of them. For all the picture's vainglorious tragic posing, it provides no real transformation of consciousness that could be labeled anything as homely as coming-of-age or anything as lofty as catharsis. Father sacrifices dignity; boy learns not to repeat father's mistakes. Mendes follows this recipe for moral edification with the same perfunctory tediousness with which he would observe, "One plus one equals two." In the end, viewers are forced into mindlessly accepting the story's inevitabilities without complaint, encouraged by Mendes and company not to dwell too long on what the results are supposed to mean for anyone.
Since this approach grows rather overwrought and monotonous before too soon, the final tragic impact shot for all along (better not described in detail, although, like Sophocles, Self never intends to deliver much surprise) ultimately feels rather false: Road to Perdition labors to fabricate a tone and a mood and a certain gravitas that it simply has not managed to earn, not with the slim handful of character interactions its plot is challenged to subsist on. Mendes and Self fail to realize that true tragedy, at least in the Aristotelian terms they’re pursuing, has to be explored to generate the right psychological payoff -- the storytellers can't get away with just evoking it using slick camerawork and an insistently melancholic atmosphere.
In this sense, Road to Perdition proves instructive in that it demonstrates that true greatness does not follow a formula. As much as Mendes and the rest of us would like to believe in some divine equation that yields masterworks by default, this creative ideal absolutely does not exist. (No kidding.) But the picture, with all its moralistic underpinnings, bravura performances, and sleek visual showmanship, caters to every facet of our perception of such an equation that it's no wonder so many critics and audiences expect to revisit it come Oscar season. It panders to just those sorts of narrowly "discriminating" arthouse tastes Kael was describing 24 years ago.
And yet, oddly, I enjoyed it.
Yes, believe it or not, on the other side of the same coin, Road to Perdition reveals in its murky aura of sadness a nice little bit of sly, gritty, provocative whimsy that somehow works to salvage the film's potential as raw amusement. This movie actually has a small playful dimension, one that strikes for such a rousing effect that you probably won't care about whether it's really "earned" its payoff or not, as if the question would even come to mind in the first place.
Juvenile as my assertion may sound, I must insist that this redemptive quirk is rooted in the screenwriter's injection of the Jude Law heavy into his source material. Though his presence here is clearly superfluous, intended solely for effect, this Harlen "The Reporter" Maguire, a hit man with a penchant for photographing his murder victims, happens to perfectly manifest the old model of classic, clichéd screen villainy exhibited at its height in the vintage westerns of the 1960’s. It comes as no surprise, then, as I noted earlier, that most of the scenes strung around his influence have been assembled with a brilliant, diabolical artificiality reminiscent of some of that genre’s masterpieces (up until now, this sort of entertainment has only survived in the underrated filmic guise of animé). In keeping with this tradition, Maguire is even allowed a typically flamboyant screen introduction decked out with all the requisite grotesquerie of his profession, as he’s first seen straining to compose a frame of a man with a knife lodged in his chest. This sequence alone is so cheerfully exploitative that it seems to suggest a more audacious directorial sensibility toiling behind the scenes. In fact, this is that same sensibility we may recognize from American Beauty, a piece of fearlessly over-the-top satire that, unlike most of Road to Perdition, isn’t afraid of scraping at and popping open those nasty sores festering on its surface, a film that doesn’t seem ashamed basking in the luxurious pus of its own corruption. There’s something in all this to imply that Mendes was in fact secretly eager to deliver something trashier, something more cinematically animate than what he’s actually put together here. But at least we get to savor a small taste of what was lingering in the back of his mind.
What’s more, this Maguire figure calls to mind some tantalizing (if not thoroughly investigated) questions about a cultural fascination with celluloid violence, forcing snide detractors like myself to second-guess Road to Perdition’s precarious contrasts between its sometimes garish and sometimes mercifully minimalist depictions of slaughter. “The Reporter”’s pathological adoration for the moribund human figure even seems to mirror the audience’s as well as the film’s interest in the aesthetic splendor of death. For instance, the execution that Sullivan’s son observes near the story’s opening almost appears as if it had been photographed not by Hall, but by Maguire himself: the victim’s dying collapse proceeds in a perverse slow-motion, which in effect draws out every lurid detail of the process of fatality for an effect that the typical, carnage-starved teenage boy would describe as “cool.” This scene says a lot more about the nature of cinema than the entire film could ever hope to say about the nature of Greek tragedy. Of course, Mendes may only want to underscore the psychological trauma this sight must be wreaking on the youthful onlooker, but the shot feels too subjectively lengthy to be dismissed with that sort of dull rationalization. Later on, when Newman’s character remarks, “That’s hard, seeing that for the first time,” Mendes seems to counterpoint, “No, it was absolutely fantastic.”
But perhaps I’m amplifying a thematic dimension Mendes didn’t intend to probe in the first place. Either way, I’ll have to avoid delving too deep into the issue, so allow me digress for a moment and inflict one more discontented jab against this film before I’m totally through with it. Something must be said of Sullivan, or at least the man embodying him.
In accordance with the film’s spirit of bold button-pushing, Tom Hanks' performance appropriately marks a rather jarring lapse from convention, though I can't say it should be noted as much of a feather in his cap. Here he's been cast wildly against type, adhering to a strange and dubious new trend instituted in the past year by the likes of Robin Williams (Insomnia, One-Hour Photo) and Denzel Washington (Training Day). Naturally, then, viewers will feel inclined to applaud his rendition of tainted heroism as the best performance of his career, not because of the quality of his work, but because of his choice of the role in and of itself (of course, none of his benefactors will admit this). If we examine his performance objectively, however, we find some charge and allure in Michael Sullivan's screen manifestation only because the role itself is shaken up by the iconography of the actor who inhabits it. In fact, Hanks is even more stingily inexpressive than Billy Bob Thornton was in The Man Who Wasn't There, pulling through this chore the easy way by shrouding his talent in an impenetrable mask of moroseness. As a result, he transforms himself from an actor into a mere tragic-hero placeholder.
Nonetheless, this one little quibble remains comparatively minor when considered alongside all my other ones, and it hardly obscures the fact that Road to Perdition, on a primal level, often proves exhilarating in its deft manipulation of situations and archetypes. Admittedly, I've chosen very superficial reasons to admire this film, but an appreciation of Mendes' work on any deeper plane of understanding would have to indicate some sad self-deception, an act of thoughtless resignation to the vague, unfocused visceral urgency of this ludicrous self-proclaimed masterpiece. Road to Perdition may have been preprogrammed to win Oscars, but if we can deprogram for ourselves the response Mendes meant to elicit from us, perhaps we can at least enjoy some good, old-fashioned, ingenuous fun from this otherwise soulless piece of “artistry.” |
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Road to Perdition |
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review by Andre de Alencar Lyon |
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Sam Mendes |
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Preprogrammed for greatness? |
