Needless to say, Mendes's voice often has to focus on family, or find an outlet between generations. Whether it is the ambiguous interaction between young girls and middle-aged people in the famous American Beauty, or the revenge of father and son in Road to Perdition, not to mention the advance and retreat of couples in Revolutionary Road, they are all the highlights of his efforts. Not to mention, the unrelated theme of Skyfall has added the emotional scene between the boss and the old subordinates like a mother and son.
In Away We Go, what kind of self-treatment are you talking about? Why on earth did Burt and Verona choose to drift around prenatally? Sam Mendes buried a foreshadowing here, hidden carefully, and slowly revealed it later. After all, it is the unrest that has been buried that makes the young couple embark on a journey to find a new home.
Verona lost her parents at the age of 22, which has always been a hidden danger in her heart, and she has never dared to face it. The journey that Mendes sorts out is actually the heroine's practice of letting go of her inner demons. Not long after the opening, the reason for their initial settlement is revealed through the dialogue between the little lovers, just because Burt's parents are near, and they are invisibly based on their hearts. After Burt's parents decided to live abroad, they also decided to set off (in fact, Verona persuaded Burt to leave the whole process), looking for the next place where they could feel at ease.
The candidates along the way have chosen the location of relatives and friends on both sides, hoping to use the contact of relatives and friends to settle down again. It's a pity that the relatives, friends and families they visited were not healthy, which severely damaged Verona's confidence in finding support. At the first stop in Phoenix, Verona's former employer's family has been secretly broken, and it is all dependent on the numbness of the members to maintain each other; Verona's sister in Toussaint has not even found an ideal husband; Burt's cousin in Madison 's interpretation borders on a cult; their old classmates in Montreal were doing well, but failed in childbirth and lost several babies.
During this trip, the director used the communication between different supporting characters and the protagonist to slowly embellish the trauma of the heroine, and also found the real reason for this trip. In the end, the heroine in the story begins to face the past and returns to her parents' former residence, which is a search for her roots and a new start.
The perfect family set by the director in the movie will eventually become a distant Garden of Eden. This journey of searching, reflecting a new destination with a non-existent goal, has its own special meaning and is especially worth discussing. Unfortunately, in the last plot twist, Burt's younger brother's family was broken, and its drama force was slightly lacking in order to wake Verona. In this way, the reasons for seeking the roots seem to be self-evident.
Likewise, Mendes' portrayal of the male protagonist is rather hollow. Since it is Away We Go, of course there needs to be more complementarity between male and female characters. Perhaps in the character setting, Burt's family is quite healthy, and the reason for him to go on the road in the end can only be out of love. Followed and cared for the whole process, but became a supporting role, and its functionality was not as important as his perverted cousin. When theatrical preparations tipped in Verona's side, the movie ended up being Away She Goes.
But when this layer is revealed, all Verona's words and deeds really seem reasonable. Whether it is the initial settlement, the proposal to travel in the middle, to the final exploration of the old residence, the characters are especially full. Mendes' directing skills are also particularly ingenious in this film. He puts the entire story line before the characters, driven by the plot, and then reveals the trauma of the heroine layer by layer, which is especially fascinating, but also quite obscure. About this reason, some audiences classify it as an ordinary family movie, or a commercial comedy, with rough actions and reasons. When you think about it, Away We Go is already the least showy movie in Mendes' career, but it adds a lot to it.
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