REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
It's not a very happy holiday season, from the movie perspective anyway, what with at least 4 Holocaust related films, another about suicide as redemption, and another about an aging professional wrestler. Of course, one can always find refuge with Jim Carrey in Yes Man or the super hit Four Christmases, but I understand that even in Marley and Me, that cute little puppy on the poster eventually dies. Now comes, another potential best picture nominee, Revolutionary Road, billed as Kate and Leo together again (see Titantic if you were one of the only individuals on the planet who didn't see that it) with not a happy ending in sight.
Revolutionary Road is the product of many attempts to bring the very successful and celebrated 1961 novel by Richard Yates to the screen. Yates, himself, even tried to buy back the rights he had sold at one point, he was so frustrated at the delays and determined to see the book made into a movie. Unfortunately he died in 1992 and therefore failed to see his masterwork make it to the big screen, and maybe that's okay, because as compelling as the story is, I am positive it falls a somewhat short.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler who we briefly see meeting at a party and "hooking up", although that's not what they called it back then. Seven years later they are living in the suburbs, Frank doing something he considers uninteresting and "silly" at the company where his father had worked for 20 years. April is living the stultifying and oppressive, Betty Friedan existence: cooking, cleaning and taking care of their two children. We follow them from conflict to conflict, they are clearly NOT happy. When April comes up with a plan to leave the suburban life behind, Frank, seems to go along, but we closely watch as it all unravels.
The novel is celebrated for penetrating the facade of the 1950s with its' forced containment of the soul into suburban tracts and subdivisions, men going out to work, while women stayed put. This was mostly, of course, the middle class scenario, not available to many women who had to work regardless of what their husbands were doing. But even in those cases, and I think of my own upbringing here, that regimented ideal of domestic perfection was hardwired, and you were supposed to enjoy it, dammit. A lot of women went crazy and a lot of men cheated and abused alcohol.
Additionally, Frank and April, having imagined themselves as bohemians at one point, still seem themselves as somehow better or removed from the suburban experience, above it. She imagines something different in Paris, while he can't imagine what he would do if he were set free. Ultimately, they can't seem to move forward or beyond.
I love the concept of this film, because anything that looks to expose that fantasy of the 1950s appeals to me. It was a fascinating time. Many of the now celebrated films of the period from Vertigo to Douglas Sirk's melodramas like Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life barely contain the anxiety and neurosis beneath their shiny 50s surfaces. It was the so called calm before the storm of the 1960s cultural revolution. Mad Men, the exceptional series running on the cable station AMC, looks back with scrutiny, revealing the secrets beneath glamorous lives of admen on Madison Avenue, their sexually harassed secretaries, and neglected wives and children.
Perhaps because I've been examining the 1950s in detail for awhile now, Revolutionary Road is not so much of a revelation for me. The design details are meticulous, everyone has a bar set up in their living room even if it's just on a little table, for example. Kate, Leo and scene stealer Michael Shannon as the truth talking lunatic are all excellent. However, I found that the action and feeling was too often spelled out. There are at least two points at which April asks Frank to stop talking and simply let her think, but he won't. I too would have liked a bit less dialogue as exposition, and a little more subtle suggestion. Not until the very last part of the film does this happen in a big way. In her penultimate scene, April stand silent. Later we watch and listen as the realtor Helen Givings (Kathy Bates) disparages the Wheelers she used to so admire, while her husband (Frank Easton) turns down his hearing aid and the volume of the film fades. Finally, in those closing moments, it is indeed brilliant.
Revolutionary Road opens December 26, 2008
Directed by Sam Mendes; written by Justin Haythe, from the novel by Richard Yates; produced by Sam Mendes, John N. Hart, Scott Rudin and Bobby Cohen; director of photography, Roger Deakins; edited by Tariq Anwar; music by Thomas Newman. Released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 119 minutes.
With: Leonardo DiCaprio (Frank Wheeler), Kate Winselt (April Wheeler), Kathy Bates (Helen Givings), Michael Shannon(John Givings), David Harbour (Shep Campbell), Zoe Kazan (Maureen Grube), Kathryn Hahn (Milly Campell) and Dylan Baker (Jack Ordway).
