Road To Perdition Themes

The director of the film road to perdition (Sam Mendes) uses an extensive variety of film techniques such as lighting, special effects and costumes in order to deliver the full impact of the Motifs and ideas within the film. The main theme throughout the film is the father son relationship, this is primarily the main message that is being referred to in the film. As well as minor themes such as redemption and consequences of violence on families and society as a whole. Father son relationships is also the catalyst to the events in the film, this is primarily because Connor Ronny suffers from father hunger which is a child's need for constant contact with their father or another male role model. Father hunger is Freud's concept that without

Was the scene where Michael Sullivan SR (Tom Hanks kills his father figure John Rooney in the climax of the film. This is because it demonstrates the drastic conscnse of a missing father figure during critical stages of our development. At the start of this scene there is only the dark noir styled streets of Chicago. There is no music at this point but the director (Sam Mendes) uses ambient or diegetic sounds. This case being heavy rain Sam Mendes uses this ambient feature often throughout the film. This causes the audience to associate water with death as in numerous scenes throughout the film there is always the recurring symbolism of water to represent death. This gives the audience a subtle hint that someone is going to die sometime in the near future. (This also demonstrates to the audience that characters have very little control over life and death throughout the film). The next shot shows Michael Sullivan SR in front of the Thompson machine gun case .In this part you can see how the shots change from the gun case to a shot looking up to

The shot of Michael Sullivan is a good example of excellent cinematography used throughout the film. Throughout the film you can similar shots like the rain scene during the film.(It is because of this that Road to perdition gained the academy award for Best Cinematography). The next shot is a close up of John Rooney's face, this shot helps the audience to see the emotion present on John's Rooney's face such as acceptance because he realised that this would be the only resolution to the conflict either he and his son would die by Michaels relentless need to avenge his son and wife. Or by John Rony killing Michael and his son to prevent him from killing Connor Rooney. Michaels then proceed to slowly approach John Rooney then proceeds to look at Michael at which point he simply says “I'm glad its you”. I believe this to be a good piece of dialogue because it conveys John's Rooney's regret that this whole affair ever occurred. As well as thanking Michael the son he adopted and loved for killing him. Instead of his mentally unstable son who would probably kill his father so he would gain John Rooney's criminal