Absconded Future: the road to perdition

it's been a long time since i've sat down to properly watch a movie, even though friday night movie marathons are common sights in the various dorm rooms, some times with up to 16 people squeezed into the tiny space.

i love watching films by myself, usually in the dead of the night, in my case at 4am in the morning. this movie is not new to me. in fact i have already seen it a couple of times. but this time i was watching it with an objective in mind - i chose it as the subject of my very first formal essay for my film class.

sam mendes is an immense talent. if you have seen american beauty, you would have remembered his penchant for the unconventional. the road to perdition also happened to be his second outing with conrad hall as the cinematographer, who is largely responsible for both's films' aethetics.

plot aside, this time i would be mainly looking at the cinematography aspect, and the mis-en-scene (big word) techniques employed by the director to tell the story. it is very much interesting to see the amalgamation of both mendes' and hall's ideas in every shot or scene.

and the interesting choice of medium that hall decided to print the film on (kodak's vision premier print stock) which gave much stronger blacks and saturates the colour so it tended towards black and white.

what's more interesting is that this movie is also set in the 1930s, in the depth of the depression, in chi-town! probably the most gangster-esque place other than new york. i hate it though, how people always compare every other gangster flick to the godfather. road to perdition is a complete different creature. i'd say it's a lot closer to its graphic novel roots - way darker, grungier, colder.

just a few interesting pics on how they they framed the scenes. the lighting techniques they used are pretty rad to say the least. actually... it's absolutely mind-bloggling.