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Re: Perdition, anyone? I know the road... (spoilers, if that'simportant)

On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Layne Petersen wrote:
> There were so many beautiful images/concepts, but I guess I kind of
> expected as much from Sam Mendes after "American Beauty".

Hmmm.  _Road to Perdition_ reminded me of _American Beauty_ too, but not
in such a positive way.  It reminded me that Sam Mendes seems to think his
trite cliches will be a lot more impressive if he pours lots of *style*
onto them.  There were scenes in _Perdition_ I found very predictable, and
I couldn't decide if it was because Mendes *wanted* us to find them
predictable (as Ebert says, the film has the fatalism of Greek tragedy,
but that only accounts for one or two of the scenes in question), or if it
was because Mendes was under the mistaken impression that he was doing
something New and Significant with the artform, when he was doing neither.

> His conflicted realization that his son is all he has left after pushing
> so hard just to leave town and his realization that he really needed his
> son just to survive was pretty devastating to me.

Hmmm, this reminds me of one critic's observation that _Road to Perdition_
is "a gangster movie that's also a wee bit _Ya-Ya_, though the divide here
is between fathers and sons instead of mothers and daughters."  :)

> I loved the ending as well.

Really?  I like the ending of the original graphic novel better.  (And I
didn't check it out until *after* I'd seen the film.)

> The friend I saw it with on Friday night wasn't as up on the ending as I
> was. I guess I pretty much thought he had to die. I mean, I suppose,
> like "American Beauty" it's kind of spelled out in the first minute of
> the film that he's going to die, but it's still a shocking, beautiful,
> sad, complex few minutes of film.

You found it "shocking"?  This was one of the main "predictable" moments I
refer to above.  It was obvious that someone was gonna kill the guy, and
like my friend Jeff said in his review of the film:

   There could have been so much more here. But Mendes makes his rather
   simple moral point with all the operatic resonance of some great
   awakening, just like he did in "American Beauty". We've already figured
   out "the moral of the story" long before he arrives there. In fact,
   we're anticipating how it will end. I was disappointed at how, instead
   of being surprised at all by the conclusion, I just sat there and
   clocked how long the movie held its breath before the inevitable.

I can't comment on, or quibble with, the way a film affects a person on a
*personal* level, but if we're going to make quasi-objective claims about
a film's success as a work of art, I'm afraid this film comes up short.

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 "I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
      Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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