Revolutionary Road Dripping in Painful Insight
If you were waiting for another timeless romance featuring Titanic lovebirds Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road goes out of its way to prove to you right upfront that it I definitely not that movie. After a brief pre-opening credits meet-cute at a party, the film quickly fast forwards into the future to show the duo engaging in once of the more verbally brutal confrontations this side of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. With kinetic ferocity the two proceed to rip one another to shreds, and within the first ten minutes it becomes more than apparent the only thing hitting an iceberg here will be these two’s marriage.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunite in Paramount Vantage's Revolutionary Road
It is the 1950’s and relative newlyweds April (Winslet) and Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) appear to have it all. Two kids, a fabulous home in the suburbs on Revolutionary Road, all that’s missing is the picket fence and the cute little dog. To their friends the couple’s life is to be admired, to the kindly realtor Helen Givings (Kathy Bates) who sold them their home the pair are going to be the ones who finally puts their up and coming neighborhood on the map.
But beneath the sunny façade the cracks in the foundation are starting to split in two. With that in mind, April hatches a plan that will hopefully change her family’s fortunes for the better. She wants them all the pull stakes and move to Paris, let them all find the direction and freedom they’ve always dreamt about and longed for but never had the courage to grab.
Things do not go smoothly, of course. Based on Richard Yates’ classic 1961 novel, the story can pretty easily be seen as an indictment against conformity, its themes of alienation and self-doubt just as potent today as they ever were during the decade in which it was written. The whole thing is an almost suffocating tempest of pain and emotional abandonment, the ardor of lost dreams tearing the Wheelers apart just as they try and struggle to pick up the pieces and recapture their once magical rapture for a second time.
It’s pretty tough stuff. The film covers topics as explosive as infidelity, divorce, sexual alienation, unwanted pregnancy, abortion and domestic violence. Its two leads match wits on both intellectual and physical levels, neither of them willing to pull their punches in desperate search to hopefully find the key which might unlock a happiness neither has had in what feels like eons.
This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. More than that, for those unfamiliar with the novel (like myself) the picture offers up a corker of a climax, the whole thing ultimately spiraling into a direction I never in million years saw as a possibility. The look of hurt and regret spilling over Frank’s face as the film fades to black shook me to my core, the very fiber of my being aching along with him as he watched his children merrily play on a community playground as he looks on from afar.
Director Sam Mendes has outdone himself with this one. For my money, this is his best epic to date, far more consistently realized and without the showy self-indulgence marring his otherwise excellent Oscar-winning melodrama American Beauty. The film is a controlled maelstrom of want and desire, the crashing indignity of unfilled promise withering both the Wheelers and the audience away into pools of sadness so deep they could almost drown inside of them.
At the same time, it is easy to see why other acclaimed filmmakers such as John Frankenheimer and Sydney Pollack struggled with adapting this material for ages before ultimately passing and moving on to other projects. The weight of its struggles can be overpowering, the coal black nature of the narrative making it difficult for the viewer to gain any sympathy for either April or Frank. More, what they’re fighting and lusting after can feel narcissistic and selfish, and I imagine some people will dismiss the both of them out of hand before the full thrust of narrative has even made itself known to them.
To that I say hogwash. Most of us do such a great job of fooling ourselves into believing that it’s really okay to stop striving for our dreams, that it’s natural to treat them as fantasies and nothing more, that we almost absent mindedly refuse to acknowledge those who refuse to do the same. The Wheelers, for all their flaws and inabilities to communicate, begin to understand this fact at just the right time, it their collective tragedy that this realization doesn’t bear fruit quickly enough to keep them from disaster.
Both Winslet and DiCaprio are sensational here. I’d maybe even go as far to say this is, for the both of them, the best performances of their highly successful careers. Both of them tap right into April and Frank, each actor feeding off the other to deliver truly astonishing portraits of triumph, remorse, passion and sorrow transcending far beyond the source material. As good as they were over a decade ago the two of them have only gotten better, each so stunning it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Oscar dined to take note of them both.
As good as they are, however, it is veteran character actor Michael Shannon folks are going to be talking about long after they exit the theater. Usually known for playing the heavy in films like Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, his brief scenes with the Wheelers are freewheeling exercises in joyful observation and crushing disappointment. The man kicks you in the gut with his performance, his ultimate exclamations to the Wheelers dripping in an insightful mélange of hurtful recognition of their failings, the lines across his face all you need to know about just how much this wisdom injures him.
Revolutionary Road is not for the faint of heart. It attacks and threatens its audience with concepts and theories they might not at first want to see. But as it goes on intelligent viewers will come to understand the profundity of what it is the film is trying to say, the eyes opening anew to the potentials lying within, not the Wheelers, but their own. As things worth celebrating are concerned, that might be at the very top of the list.
Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4)
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