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Sam Mendes’s Revolutionary Road is the story of two miserable married people – Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) Wheeler – trapped in the emptiness and hopelessness of their 1950s suburban life, with no way out. They met at a party when they were young, Frank made her laugh; they fell in love; they married. Now Frank works at a meaningless job he loathes in Manhattan; April stays at home in their small Connecticut town to keep house and raise their two children.

Depressed and desperate, Frank becomes the typical misogynistic, self-righteous suburban husband. But watch DiCaprio’s performance carefully. There’s a detachment from this clichéd behaviour he performs. See how DiCaprio shows Frank uncertain about himself, confused with no recourse but to play the part of that loathsome husband who nearly beats his wife, and browbeats her into, as April says in all the previews, “feeling anything he wants her to feel”. He is unhappy, uncertain in his marriage, and terrified of searching for and finding a job he loves, for fear of failure. There is comfort in his misery. He has become his father – the one thing he never wanted to be - working the same terrible job at the same boring company, but it’s easier than trying to find his own identity.

Frank and April finally decide to move to Paris and leave their misery behind, until they find out that April is pregnant. She does not want the baby and neither does Frank. They both already feel trapped by their responsibilities though they claim to love their children – we don’t really see enough of their kids to judge. April is a victim here, but she is not totally helpless. But neither Mendes nor Winslet makes it that simple. April is a beautiful, fierce, intelligent, educated woman, who doesn’t take things sitting down, which almost makes her story more tragic. She is trapped by situation. Consider a lovely scene early in the film, when Frank and April are driving with their real-estate agent, house hunting in the suburbs, for a place to raise their family. Frank is in the front seat next to the real-estate agent at the wheel; April is in the backseat. Frank and the real-estate agent are fully engaged in conversation about prospects; April is staring out the window in powerless wonder. Occasionally, Frank looks back to get approval from April, but not to engage her in conversation. It is not a conscious decision for exclusion: this is what happens when you sit in the backseat of a car. But this is a clear beginning of a trend.
Yet while Mendes and these two actors get so much of the character dynamic right, in such subtle and clever ways, the screenplay holds them all back from greatness. Too many lines are obvious, especially those we’ve heard Winslet deliver in the previews: “who made these rules?”, “you think you can make me feel anyway you want me to”. Yes, I applaud them for their accuracy, but nobody talks like that. It is also a weak plot device to use a supposed “mentally ill” man as the means of telling the truth (like the sitar that only speaks the truth in Moulin Rouge) about the Wheelers’ relationship and situation. They are, essentially, children “playing house”, uncertain of what roles to take on and how to behave, so they take on, to an extent, the conventional roles of suburban couple, and find themselves oppressing not just each other, but also themselves.

Revolutionary Road has a scary and depressing message with a very dark ending. Yet it evokes little emotional response. I feel that the ending should devastate me, yet I shed no tears. I was detached: perhaps because of the sententious screenplay and the cowardly plot devices. It is interesting how, in his choice of casting, Mendes evokes the symbol of true love that Winslet and DiCaprio cultivated a decade ago in Titanic – and yet these two actors are perfectly suited to the roles regardless. The camera moves mesmerizingly and the blocking and camera movement are occasionally awe-inspiring in their understated perfection. But the screenplay is weak and Revolutionary Road remains an OK film - but an interesting and well-acted film, and at times a very, very clever film.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.