Revolutionary Road

It's hard to find movies that are extremely successful thanks in large part to the script. Screenplays that are merely adequate are often elevated to above average quality when turned into film thanks to solid direction or to a stellar performance or to a number of other things. So, it's rare to come across written material that is as expertly constructed and as piercingly observant as Justin Haythe's adaptation of the novel Revolutionary Road. Couple that with the keen direction of Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead - not a single unimpressive title to his credit), and you've got a supremely good cinematic exploration of the prisons that are suburbia and married life.

April and Frank Wheeler (Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) are regarded as an exemplary couple by the other people who live in their neighborhood, but both April and Frank are dissatisfied in their own respective ways with the conventional lifestyle they've succumbed to. As the more idealistic of the two, April couldn't be sicker of the housewife role, and she proposes to her husband that they move with their children to Paris, where she can get a job as a secretary while Frank can try to find himself and figure out what he really wants to do with his life, seeing as he despises his current job. A wide-eyed April asks Frank, "What's stopping us?" The more pragmatic Frank can think of "a number of reasons" stopping them, but ultimately agrees with the plan to move to Paris, because he craves the freedom as much as April does; as Frank states earlier in the film, when he was younger the last thing he wanted was "to end up like [his] father," and now he works at the same place of employment that his father did. This is one of the many great things about Revolutionary Road: rather than following the familiar plot line of having the wife be the only one trapped and unhappy, with the husband being the tough, traditional spouse, the story instead has BOTH characters exude unhappiness and struggle to break free, each for particular reasons. April's desperation is every bit as palpable as Frank's angst to get a release from monotony.

The scene in which April and Frank reveal their moving plans to friends/neighbors Milly and Shep Campbell (Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour) is flawlessly executed, from the awkward way in which the Wheelers make the announcement, to the Campbells' initial misunderstanding and subsequent pretense of being happy for them, and to the Wheelers' apprehensive stab at explaining their decision. This is followed by a scene, once April and Frank are gone, in which the Campbells are alone, and Shep breaks the silence by commenting that the Wheelers' plan "sounds immature," to which Milly responds to by breaking down crying, but from joy, saying she's "extremely relieved." Though the lead characters aren't even present during this scene, the scene itself is perfect in encapsulating what Revolutionary Road wants to get across: Milly probably feels just as incarcerated in suburban hell as April and Frank do, and when she heard that the two of them were making a move to escape from said life, she got worried, perhaps thinking that maybe she could do it as well, deeply scared of the prospect of making a decision that would greatly alter the comfortable course of her life. So, upon hearing her husband dismiss the Wheelers' plan as immature, she can go back to the way things were, and the peace she gets from knowing she can remain in eternal hell is so intense it makes her cry - how ironic.

Unfortunately for the Wheelers, ostensible "obstacles" get in the way of Paris: April becomes pregnant and Frank gets an unexpected promotion at the job he hates. What's most interesting is the way in which each of them hides the obstacle from the other until it's literally impossible to continue doing so. After getting the promotion, Frank pretends to still be studying the French dictionary, and he exhibits an inability to say things directly to his wife by one day at the beach casually telling Shep (while April listens) about the promotion, rather than just announcing it face-to-face to April while they were alone at home. This sets April off, thus propelling the decline of the couple's relationship, and it all gets even worse when April has no choice but to reveal the delicate condition she's in.

Throughout Revolutionary Road, two crucial visits are made to the Wheelers' home by the family composed of the realtor who got them the house, Helen (Kathy Bates), her husband Howard (Richard Easton) and their son John (Michael Shannon), whom Helen claims has mental problems, even though he turns out to be the one character who is most aware of what is happening, or at least the only one with the balls to say things the way they are. There's a magnificently set-up scene in which the dialogue features Helen commenting on how beautiful the day is, while at the same time John makes blatant, incisive remarks about April and Frank's relationship. One of the film's greatest insights comes when John states (in reference to settling into standard suburban/married life) that "plenty of people see the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness" - people are generally capable of sensing that they're unhappy, but they often don't realize that it isn't going to get any better unless they do something to change it. John is the voice of this film, and his apparent omniscience comes across even moreso during the second visit to the Wheelers' home when the couple reveals they won't be able to go to Paris because of financial reasons. Dismissed as insane, the deeply observant John wisely points out that money is always a good reason not to do something, but it's rarely the real reason, and he scans the looks on the faces of April and Frank and immediately deduces the real reasons why the Wheelers aren't leaving, and he exposes them, poundingly. Helen repeatedly apologizes for her son's insanity. Meanwhile, husband and father Howard remains curiously quiet throughout these scenes, and it's not until the final, brilliant shot of Revolutionary Road that we discover the reason for his reticence.

I've quoted a lot, and I wish I could quote more, seeing as this film is one of 2008's most fiercely observant cinematic achievements, but you're better off receiving said insight by actually watching it. Another aspect that is handled masterfully is the score - I don't often look at the credits for this, but Thomas Newman's name must be mentioned, for he has created a score that never fails to perfectly match each scene's emotional tone, and some moments would've easily felt somewhat flat if it hadn't been handled the way it was.

If there's a quibble to be had with Revolutionary Road, it's one I would've never expected I'd write in this review, and I'm very sorry to say it, but in the early scenes, Winslet simply doesn't measure up to DiCaprio. There's an air of artificiality to her performance when she's acting excited about going to Paris, and while it's nothing extreme, it's not on par with DiCaprio's consistently great work, and it's also a shocker, because Winslet is an excellent actress (and none of said artificiality was present in her work in 2006's Little Children, another deft examination of suburbia and married life). In three days, I'll get to watch her much-praised supporting performance in The Reader, and I look forward to seeing her in top form there. To be fair, though, during the final, crucial scenes of Revolutionary Road she does get her act together, and thank God she does, because if she hadn't, the film's climax (which requires a lot from her) could've been a failure. But it's DiCaprio who doesn't once stray from perfection; here's an actor who is savagely committed to every role he plays. Watch Frank's reaction in response to the remark "I hate you!", and after watching that, I dare you to say that DiCaprio isn't great in this film. The Academy will have made a serious error in judgment if it makes the same mistake it made 11 years ago with Titanic of nominating Winslet and not DiCaprio. As an added bonus, the actor is finally able to incorporate his unfading boyish good looks to a role after not being able to do so in his recent films (his characters in Blood Diamond and The Departed were both getting into fights and whatnot all the time, and in this year's Body of Lies he was, unfortunately, required to sport a hideous beard). From amazing performances as a child in both What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and This Boy's Life, to a bunch of great roles in between, to his work now in Revolutionary Road, this is what I call an incredible performer, and one from whom I have no doubt there'll be continued great things to come. In the supporting department, Kathy Bates is wonderful as the seemingly perky Helen, whom we learn a lot about during the film's final scene, and Michael Shannon gets under your skin and stays there, as the supposedly insane John.

Promoting Revolutionary Road as "Kate & Leo's reunion" (and don't forget Kathy Bates, too!), while seemingly a good marketing strategy, isn't exactly a wise thing to do because this film is strikingly different from Titanic, a movie that was basically appealing to just about everyone, while Revolutionary Road will appeal to a far more limited set of moviegoers. It's not fair at all to compare them, but if we have to, then my opinion is that Titanic is an epic, ravishing masterpiece of mainstream entertainment, a sure classic, a perfect combination of romance, action and comedy, and #4 on my all-time top 10 list, while Revolutionary Road is a near-perfect, relentlessly raw look at the implosion of a marriage, and very likely to be on my year-end top 10 list for 2008.

This is Sam Mendes' second superior examination of suburban life after 1999's American Beauty. The only reason why Revolutionary Road falls a wee-bit short of being as great as American Beauty is that American Beauty had a wider scope in that it fully examined more characters, whereas Revolutionary Road focuses heavily on April and Frank, while the supporting characters don't quite get the full-fledged development that those in American Beauty did. However, the less expansive approach works for Revolutionary Road because the couple's collapsing relationship is indeed the center of this superb story.

Though it's set in the 1950s, Mendes' film should more than resonate with present-day audiences. Despite the fact that there are more openly liberal minds out there today than there were in the 1950s, the truth remains that people still settle for the seemingly quaint nature of suburban life, and marriage still appears to be this crippling thing that, for whatever odd reason, keeps people from doing anything groundbreaking with their lives, and instead forces them to just stay put. In fact, the makers of Revolutionary Road take advantage of the time period in which it's set to foreshadow the further decline in the years to come: when being offered his promotion, Frank is tempted by being told, "You'll be a part of something exciting: computers!" The criticism could not be more evident, as it's gotten to a point that computers have severely affected people's desire to be adventurous and separate from the monotony of relying on man-made objects, and it's also led to a desensitization as a result of people communicating through typed text, which arguably leaves little room for emotions to flow, and thus, it doesn't exactly make you feel alive. April and Frank find themselves in a situation in which they're both having a very hard time feeling alive (as Frank puts it, he no longer feels "filled with blood"), and Revolutionary Road is a powerfully amazing depiction of the crushingly ruinous results that can come from being caged in that situation.

8/10