Revolutionary Road

“Revolutionary Road”

USA. 2008. Directed by Sam Mendes. Screenplay by Justin Haythe. Based on the novel by Richard Yates. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, David Harbour, Richard Easton, Zoe Kazan, Jay O. Sanders, Ryan Simpkins and Ty Simpkins.

Rating: ★★★½

Nine years after he explored the detrimental results of becoming stuck in the materialistic American dream in the 90s in American Beauty, director Sam Mendes now rewinds the clock to the 1950s to show that pursuit was even more ensnaring in Revolutionary Road. The suburban houses and the picket fences are comforting but just staying in stillness in nice environments reveals a dead emptiness inside. The sense of emptiness is particularly severe and punishing for a married couple as young as the 30-year olds Frank and April Wheeler.

The movie is adapted from the acclaimed 1961 novel by Richard Yates (which I sadly have not read and will at some point) and is also notable for the first pairing of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as the Wheelers since James Cameron’s gigantic critical and commercial hit, Titanic. Leave any illusions for the romantic sparks to fly between them at the door though. This story, after the initial love at first sight, is way past the idealistic honeymoon phase of the marriage and at the tragic point when the young couple realizes they are like sandpaper in dealing with the hollow entrapment of suburban life.

In the opening scene, we meet Frank and April at a party where they talk and share excitedly about their own fantasies and dreams (which is the only time anyone is excited in the movie in a positive way). She claims she wants to be an actress while his interest in random exploration to find his true aspirations seems enticing to her. In the next scene, however, we see that she is not much of an actress as the lead in an embarrassingly bad production of The Petrified Forest. The fierce fight they subsequently have on the way home sets their relationship dynamic and tone for the rest of the movie, where she refuses to talk about it and he insists he wants to talk and work it out, only to end up mocking and insulting the atrocious acting he has witnessed right to her face.

Thus, April stays at home doing dull household chores while Frank commutes to a job he hates in New York City making business machines and sits idly in his own tiny cubicle in a sea of cubicles (reminiscent of Kevin Spacey’s Lester Burnham in the same situation). When bored, he has no qualms picking up an office secretary and having an affair. We barely even see the two children he and April had at an early age because, to them, the children are like moving luggage that just waltz in and out of their lives.

Then, one day, she suddenly gets a wild idea for him to just quit the job he loathes and for their family to move to Paris. She says that she can support him and the kids by working as a political secretary over there (she repeatedly says, “Do you know how much they pay government secretaries over there?” as if to remove the doubt from herself that it will really be enough to sustain them) while he tries to figure out what he actually wants to do. The idea seems threatening to him at first but he eventually agrees the move might make a nice change of pace from suburban stillness and ennui. A neighboring married couple, Milly (Kathryn Hahn) and Shep Campbell (David Harbour) cannot even fathom the thought of leaving the suburbs at all and her priceless expression in particular offers one of the few scenes of comic relief.

All of that changes, however, when suddenly Frank is offered a promotion at his current job as well as another unforeseen development and it is at this point we really see the true colors of Frank and April as individuals as their desperation grows. He certainly wants to be at a place where he feels more valued than his job is making him but his personality is much too lazy to really seek it out. She is much more of a free spirit and we start to see that her real motivation behind leaving it all behind for Paris is so that she can escape the environs where they just smoke and drink too much. She also would not have to meet the same old people such as the courteous but incredibly nosy neighbor, Mrs. Helen Givings (Kathy Bates), whose bland niceness grows uncomfortably conformist and ultimately a little frightening. Then, when Mrs. Givings brings along her so-called “insane” son, John (a scene-stealing and off-kilter Michael Shannon) for dinner, we see that his “insanity” is really that he is ahead of his time and is brutally honest about it. He immediately calls their bluff and sees that Frank is just a slothful man at heart and not at all attuned to April’s feelings of entrapment and desperate loneliness.

Director Sam Mendes, who in real life is married to Kate Winslet, is obviously comfortable re-examining suburban idleness and, with the literate adapted screenplay by Justin Haythe, does not have to rely on as much visual symbolism as he did in the Oscar®-winning American Beauty. Now working regularly with his cinematographer, Roger Deakins (after the passing of his previous collaborator, the late, great Conrad L. Hall), he paints his suburban homes with harsher, brighter lighting and even emptier decors. He also keeps the musical score from another frequent collaborator, Thomas Newman to a minimum, which is probably a good thing because, despite its typically haunting quality, it strikes the same notes repeatedly perhaps to reflect the redundancy of the environs.

Most of all, he draws stellar performances out of his outstanding cast. DiCaprio and Winslet prove that they still have a magnetic on-screen chemistry, although this time it is clearly much more abrasive. Much of the awards attention seems to be going to Winslet (also starring in The Reader this season), who, in some ways, is playing an extension of her liberated spirit in Titanic within 1950s suburban environs. But I hope some attention is also paid to DiCaprio because he is the one who really shows dimensions we have never seen from him before. April accurately observes his character as “a pathetic, self-deluded little boy” right at the start and it is astonishing to see how the typical boyish qualities he is most often associated with are skewered into the perpetual confusion and irremediable hopelessness suggested by the apt and infuriating description from Winslet’s character.

With that sense of repeated abrasion and hopelessness, we know that Revolutionary Road will not even offer the slight glimmer of hope American Beauty offered at the end. That may drive many fans of DiCaprio and Winslet away from this film, particularly younger ones who have fond memories of them from Titanic. But it should not for this reason: They can find an object lesson that a love and marriage founded only on the whims of an idealized romance can come crashing down like a house of cards later in life.