The endur­ing atmos­phere of Road to Perdition

In an ear­ly scene in Road to Perdi­tion, 12-year-old Michael (Tyler Hoech­lin) is asked by mob boss John Rooney (Paul New­man) to retrieve his jack­et from his study. On enter­ing, Michael finds John’s son, Con­nor (Daniel Craig), smok­ing and lis­ten­ing to music. Michael hov­ers on the thresh­old, the room full of jazz and smoke, Connor’s face shad­owed, out of focus. As the scene ends, the cam­era tight­ens on the thick ten­drils lazi­ly exhaled by Con­nor. It’s a some­what incon­se­quen­tial shot, designed more for atmos­phere than char­ac­ter or plot, but it’s a shot that has curled around and clung to me for the last 20 years, per­fect­ly evok­ing the feel­ing of a boy con­front­ed by the strange world of men.

This is Road to Perdition’s great achieve­ment: atmos­phere. It ele­vates what might oth­er­wise be a sim­ple revenge sto­ry: gang­ster Mike Sul­li­van (Tom Han­ks goes on the run with his eldest child, Michael, after the rest of his fam­i­ly is mur­dered by his boss’ son. All the film’s major ele­ments – the direc­tion, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, script, music and per­for­mances – work seam­less­ly in uni­son to cre­ate a mood that pen­e­trates and per­vades from the open­ing titles, haunt­ing the view­er for a long time afterwards.

It’s a film I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly evan­gel­i­cal about, espe­cial­ly as it feels some­what over­looked despite the filmmaking’s finesse and pedi­gree (Mendes, New­man, Han­ks, Craig et al) – per­haps unfair­ly and uncon­scious­ly dis­missed due to the story’s ori­gins as a graph­ic nov­el. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve intro­duced Road to Perdi­tion to friends, and even after all these years, its atmos­phere still knocks the air out of me.

The tone is set from the start: a black screen, the sound of waves, the swell of strings. We know we’re wit­ness­ing a tragedy. As a boy stands on a beach alone, gaz­ing at the open ocean, he thinks about his father in the past tense. It’s a fore­shad­ow­ing mir­rored by the title of the film itself – this is a sto­ry about a down­fall. An atmos­phere of fore­bod­ing has been estab­lished, a ten­sion that will tight­en until every­thing unrav­els in the fatal end sequence.

Road to Perdi­tion lets its visu­als do most of the talk­ing, the stripped-back script reflect­ing the aus­ter­i­ty of the era. The col­lab­o­ra­tion between Mendes and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Con­rad Hall con­jures a par­tic­u­lar kind of mag­ic. This is Hall’s sec­ond film with Mendes after Amer­i­can Beau­ty, and the pair fall per­fect­ly in step, using the absence of light to cre­ate sus­pense and dri­ve the sto­ry: the shad­ow over Sullivan’s eyes, con­vey­ing his unknow­able nature and com­pro­mised morals; the dim and bare inte­ri­ors of the Great Depres­sion that also sig­ni­fy the hos­tile world Michael’s been pre­ma­ture­ly forced into.

In an age when dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy allows film­ing in pitch dark­ness, cre­at­ing a murk­i­ness that per­me­ates main­stream films and TV, Road to Perdi­tion is a mas­ter­class in how to shoot sequences in the dead of night, ensur­ing the action, char­ac­ters and sto­ry are always high­light­ed, nev­er lost. And if any­one knows how to get the most out of Newman’s famous blue eyes, it’s Hall, who worked with the actor on three of his most acclaimed films, Harp­er, Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid.

This exper­tise is dis­played in the pow­er­ful penul­ti­mate scene between John and Mike, in which we see a des­per­ate man forced to choose between the son he nev­er want­ed and a friend ask­ing for per­mis­sion to end that son’s life. Road to Perdi­tion would be both Hall and Newman’s final film, earn­ing Hall a posthu­mous Oscar, and New­man a Best Sup­port­ing Actor nom­i­na­tion. The fact that this is the swan song for two giants of cin­e­ma only adds to the film’s ele­giac quality.

The cast­ing of cel­e­brat­ed men­sch New­man in the role of John Rooney is one of the film’s great manoeu­vres – some­thing that can also be said of the cast­ing in gen­er­al. All of the main actors here (with the excep­tion of Hoech­lin) are play­ing against type: affa­ble lead­ing men trans­formed into anti­heroes and vil­lains. Han­ks is the clear­est exam­ple, giv­ing one of his most strik­ing per­for­mances as the hard-edged Mike. It adds a deep­er dimen­sion to the char­ac­ter, and to the film, as the infa­mous mob enforcer (“some say there was no good in him at all”) must redis­cov­er his human­i­ty and step into the role of father for the first time.

Although it was nev­er the film’s orig­i­nal inten­tion, Daniel Craig’s tenure as one of cinema’s best-known heroes has the same effect on sub­se­quent view­ings of his per­for­mance as the prin­ci­ple antag­o­nist, the film cap­i­tal­is­ing on his uneven fea­tures and pale eyes to chill­ing effect – no more so than after a ten­der piano duet between Mike and John Rooney fills Con­nor with incred­u­lous rage. By hav­ing our expec­ta­tions sub­vert­ed in this way, these per­for­mances leave a last­ing impression.

When it rains in Road to Perdi­tion, it feels like it will nev­er stop rain­ing; like there’s noth­ing the rain won’t touch and if it were to touch you it would soak your very soul. This comes to a head in a cli­mac­tic sequence that, despite last­ing just three-and-a-half min­utes, echoes for an eter­ni­ty. It’s a scene that demon­strates the strength of the film’s com­po­nent parts – and epit­o­mis­es its endur­ing atmos­phere. As John Rooney steps from a bar into the night, the sound of rain fades until we’re left with Thomas Newman’s ghost­ly, Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed score.

An auto­mat­ic weapon strobes silent­ly in the dis­tance, Rooney’s men crum­pling to the floor sound­tracked by a lul­la­by. Rooney turns to find Sul­li­van, the ungod­ly rain audi­ble once more, his voice crack­ing: ​“I’m glad it’s you.” We hear Mike’s fear­some Tom­my Gun for real this time – deaf­en­ing, bru­tal­ly mechan­i­cal. Hold­ing back tears, Sul­li­van notices the peo­ple look­ing down on him in judge­ment from their win­dows, haloed by light. As he strides back into the shad­ows, his revenge is bit­ter­sweet: he might have saved his son, but there’s no ques­tion Mike Sul­li­van is head­ing for damnation.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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