Intrada Soundtrack Forum

August 6, 2002

Road to Perdition
Composed and Conducted by Thomas Newman
Decca Records 440 017 167-2
Tracks: 27
Total Time = 70:25

Rain pours. A man waits in the shadows. Suddenly, blam blam blam! Tommy guns blaze, bodies fall to the left, the right.

Yet we hear no gunshots, no screams!

We do hear sounds though. We hear violins and violas and cellos and basses! The scene plays, major chords shift about, subdued keyboards linger above. It’s one of the most memorable weddings of sight and sound in recent memory. And for a brief, shining moment, Thomas Newman is the main star!

If you haven’t seen the movie, hopefully I won’t spoil it here. But be warned. This is music married to storytelling and visuals unlike anything else so far this year. It’s hard to photograph just one spouse in a wedding portrait! I’ll try.

That said, read on.

ROAD TO PERDITION (read road to hell) brings Tom Hanks face to face with his livelihood. Enter mobster Paul Newman. In a world of gangsters and Al Capones, a story of loyalty and brotherhood plays out. Hanks works as Newman’s hitman. It’s just a job.

It was.

Things happen, Hanks gets into the fight of his life. What unfolds becomes a father and son story of epic proportions.

Father and son images are what Newman (Thomas, not Paul) spotlights. No small challenge, either. The movie has two father/son stories to tell.

It’s how Hanks, Newman (Paul, not Thomas) and sons populate an underworld that forms the heart of Sam Mendes’ movie.

Thomas Newman uses a large orchestra. Typical of the composer, a treasure trove of unusual sounds crop up from soloists amidst the orchestra. It’s fascinating because Newman doesn’t try to recreate time (1931) but goes for other things. Most of the movie is mythic. In synch, Newman moves effortlessly between rich, quasi-pastoral major sonorities and subtle, less-defined colors. ROAD TO PERDITION’s people are at once bigger-than-life and something smaller, vulnerable.

Irish backgrounds are captured with Uilleann pipes and penny whistle. Other timbres include bowed string drum, bodhran, guitar with glass, assorted metallic sounds, so forth. Haunting solos from clarinet, oboe, flute also appear.

For all the epic tragedy, Newman opens (“Rock Island, 1931â€