Elements of Mise-en-scene in Road to Perdition

Road to Perdition uses a lot of elements of mise-en-scene to comment on themes and motifs within the movie and to enhance the artistic experience. Color, for instance, stand out in a major way throughout the film. The beginning of the film uses almost all drab colors. Gray comes to mind most readily, but there are also hints of other deep and neutral colors like brown and blue. Everything, though surprisingly beautiful in its own elegant and rich way, is really very dark and depressing. Texture is used to add to the felling and tone of the movie. All the of the clothing is made of fabric that is clearly textured, thick and sturdy. The house the story begins in is full of real wood fixtures and furniture. Nothing is extravagant but everything is ornate, in a way, and authentic to the era of the film. The scene is so lavishly covered in authenticity that it feels as though we have actually entered it. And the drab, dark neutral color scheme helps this because  it blends into the darkness that surrounds the screen of the tv and makes it almost plausible that the screen is just a part of the whole and we are standing in the off-screen space.

The most impactful aspect of the movie, for me, was the use of the rain. The rain is present when the oldest son find out who is father really is and the evil he is capable of, and it is present again later when the father guns down the mobsters responsible for the death of his wife and son. The rain seems to symbolize of the inner emotional storms that are happening in the characters. The characters of the film are hard, even the surviving son, and their pain and emotions are rarely externally expressed. The film’s use of strong weather in various scenes throughout the film are effective devices for expressing internal character developments and responses to the action in those sequences.