Movie Review: Revolutionary Road
by John NolteRevolutionary Road opens its story just after the conclusion of a disastrous community theatre production of The Petrified Forest where, on a small, suburban public school stage, April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) has suffered more than just humiliation, her self image as a unique individual with a special place in the world has been destroyed. Her husband, Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), obviously tired of April’s latest attempt at self-actualization, isn’t exactly sympathetic. The argument that follows is bitter, the film that follows is probably worse than that play.
What say we don’t argue over whether or not the suburbs, especially the suburbs of the 1950s, are killers of the human spirit. To each their own, right? But does anyone really want to defend that portraying the suburbs as such hasn’t become the most tiring of tiring cliches? Almost as tiring as the mentally unbalanced character with a unique, penetrating insight into the human condition … which Revolutionary Road also employs.
Years ago, when April and Frank first met, they were not yet twenty-five, had their whole lives ahead of them and were positive they were special. She was studying to be an actress and he was a longshoreman dreaming of a life lived in Paris. Like all of us, things didn’t quite turn out as planned. For instance, I don’t drive a choo choo train and go home to a fur bikini holding Raquel Welch. The difference between by myself and the Wheelers, though, is that I grew up.
April resents Frank because instead of becoming the man who took her to Paris, he became the man who knocked her up, married her, and settled for a cubicle he loathes on the 15th floor of a big corporation. While he pushes papers, dictates memos, and seduces a pixie from the secretarial pool, she ties on an apron and quietly suffers the boredom smothering her under the sterile conformity of her suburban life and neighborhood.
At the end of her rope, April convinces Frank that with their savings and the equity in their home they can still live the dream. Sell everything, quit the job, pack up the two kids, and move to Paris. Her plan is to support him with a lucrative secretarial job she’s sure is low-hanging fruit while he uses the time to, uhm, well… And that’s part of the problem. When Frank met April he had no idea what he would do in Paris, and he still doesn’t. Frank has no artistic aspirations, but he does hate his job and so he agrees.
Obviously, the plan is doomed to unravel and while it does, so does the marriage. Frank comes to his senses after a nice promotion comes his way and the reality of the pointlessness of the move takes hold. April, on the other hand, is insane. She has no talent, no goals, no idea what she wants, just the certainty that she’s destined for something better than a cookie-cutter neighborhood and that she’s superior to her cookie-cutter neighbors.
The film’s biggest problem is that it is impossible to give even a hint of a damn about these two contemptible human beings. Young, healthy, employed… They live in a beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood and are blessed with two lovely, healthy children. Regardless of what director Sam Mendes might have had in mind, his characters aren’t suffocated by the American suburbs, they’re suffering under the realization that the world has declared its verdict that they are ordinary.
In equal parts, the film is at once the studied, somber, quiet autopsy of a marriage made in narcissism with slow, perfectly framed tracking shots set to Thomas Newman’s sparse score (more of that one finger piano plunking) in-between bursts of histrionics where both parties scream pretentious exposition at one another. Kate Winslet is awful. There isn’t a single real moment during any of it. The way she sits, how she carries herself, the way her eyes move — everything is considered and deliberate.
To be fair, DiCaprio has a few excellent moments, maybe the best of his career. As she backs him up wielding every psycho tool in the psycho wife’s handbook, he has a few memorably, powerful moments where his confusion and anguish is very real. Unfortunately, the overwrought dialogue sinks most of his performance, but the only believable moments of the film occur when he’s able to relate how it feels to be tortured by someone you love for leaving them behind as you learn to count your blessings.
Revolutionary Road is more of that contemporary Oscar-bait too sterile and self-important to deal with the real complications of humanity. Other than being a fly on the wall of neurotic melodrama, there’s nothing to take away from the story. Where’s the filmmaker’s courage to turn his source material into something meaningful? With American Beauty, a film I respect, Mendes made an impressive debut exploring the same theme of suburban suffering, but there was at least a real joy in Lester Burnham’s crisis of middle age and a final realization on his part, though it came too late, that appreciating what you have is much more rewarding than chasing what you don’t.
Revolutionary Road just lies there, a dead thing that like its main characters gives off a sense of entitlement about its own preciousness but without doing the heavy lifting required to earn it. Like April Wheeler, Mendes doesn’t care that his film has no worth. He’s saying, I look good, I’m me, I’m special, recognize. But the only thing special is believing anyone but wealthy, healthy narcissists will care about the trials and tribulations of wealthy, healthy narcissists.
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28 Comments
You are too nice to “American Beauty.” It was loaded with cliches: the macho military man who suppresses his own homosexuality; the spoiled sullen suburban teenager in the suffocating family; the handsome gay couple who are the only well-adjusted people in the neighborhood, to name just a few. This new film sounds like a remake of that one, which was itself a kind of gay-oriented remake of “The Graduate.” So this has been going on a long time.
When I saw “The Graduate” again a few years ago, my thought about Benjamin Braddock was “What a putz. Why doesn’t he just grow up?”
Waiting for the DVD.
Well, here we go…
Liberals have taken the ‘rich’ out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The rich are different” and substituted ‘leftists’. And ‘Revolutionary Road’ is leftist to the core. This spoiled petulant self-absorbed woman has what everyone yearns for – a beautiful home, beautiful children, citizenship in the greatest nation in the world, freedom from want and war, her health, etc. I mean this wife has it ALL. And is she satisfied? No way in hell. Why? Because it’s not about her possessions, certainly not her kids and definitely not her husband. It’s about her! Her! HER! You see, she’s leftist. And as to a leftist, the worse thing that can happen is to be like everybody else. As April screams at the top of her lungs at her husband, this is the worst of all. She’s like ‘everybody else’!!!! Horrors!
And why is this horrible? Well, you see, leftists are different than everybody else. Different as in special, as in – hell, let’s put it out there – BETTER than everybody else.
That’s what it’s all about. It’s not having a better world, not even if the world is that nifty utopia they talk about, it’s not having a better house, job, kids, husband – nah, it’s not THEM (how crass). It’s about me! Me! Me! ME! All about me. And the essence of ME is to not be like you. Like Fitzgerald , leftists aren’t like you and me.
Yup, this film is leftist to the core.
Another movie poking sticks in flyover, red state, Americas eye. I think I’ll miss it just like the others. Dear God, I wish someone would make a good movie.
Joe Vass is right. American Beauty was simple-minded and cliched. I’d say it was easily one of the worst movies to win Best Picture. Kevin Spacey is always fun to watch, but without him the movie is totally unwatchable.
To Big Hollywood and Andrew Breitbart…all I can say is it's about time someone had the guts to make a stand in the backlot. Americans are searching for more modernized family stories with 40's values. Much of my family refuses to go to the movies anymore due to the undercurrent of anti-American propaganda contained in most of the productions of the last 15 years. It is similar to the list of required reading for California schools and equally unbalanced.
By the way, I love the burbs…they are about as American as it gets. Kids can still play in the street without fear of being run over by a cabby!
GW
Just another movie I wont’ pay to see.
All that’s left to say is leftists are BORING!
okay, so movies in which rich white people whine about their unsatisfying lives dont get much love around here. Something tells me if they were poor and brown whiners living in an unfree country EVERYBODY at this site would be ga ga over it. I feel it, dont you?
well, maybe, Matt, because if they were “poor and brown whiners living in an unfree country” they would actually have something to whine about – just sayin’ – but it always depends on the script, acting, etc.
California Gold, while there is a modicum of critique on the acting and script of this movie, the review heaps scorn on the idea that one who is successful and suburban can possibly be unsatisfied. I agree the idea is cliche and its cliche because everyone knows this already and maybe that makes it a boring movie before it get out of the gate. But the review comes across as “You’re young, beautiful and rich, quit whining.” Not much of a review, IMO.
Be interesting to see movies, or the critics who write about them, really get at why many people are so unsatisfied, rather than the standard “Stifling suburbs” movie followed by the “Aaack, another stifling suburbs movie” review.
Somebody, maybe Fitzgerald, said “The rich desperately seek new ways to fill up their days.” Why?
When I saw the previews I could already tell it was going to be a “whiny – why me?” type of movie… who wants to see that? How does anyone find that remotely entertaining? I have been VERY dissapointed for the last few years and from once loving to go to the movies, it’s become why go? I wont see this one ever unless I’m really sick in bed and there is absolutley nothing else on and I’m sleeping. Also I have no desire to see Leonardo in anything anymore. He is whacked.
I honestly believe that movies like these are more dangerous to America than anything from the “sex and violence” crowd. The reason that the divorce rate goes up is because people go into it preparing to eventually be depressed and trapped like the couples they see on movies and television, so as soon as they start to feel the difficulty coming on, they bolt…”just like everyone else.” Studies show that 75% of Americans are happy, yet 75% of Americans believe that most of the country is “unhappy.”
Like American Beauty, Little Children, In the Bedroom, Pleasantville, etc., the message is, “Tradition bad! Commitment boring! Marriage trapping! Exploration good! Bending rules fun!”
Devastating.
An all-too-common Hollywood theme of adolescent adulthood. The dull thud of completely unoriginal plots and thought offers nothing to mature moviegoers; infact, it sucks the out joy and preys upon the stabilizing forces of our precious society.
Sounds like ‘Madame Bovary.’ Another woman never satisfied with her life.
Blah.
HATED this movie.
Despite Leo’s liberalism, I love his movies. Fine actor.
In fact, he acted quite finely in Revolutionary Road – but I felt the movie tried to make a mockery of family life – how a married woman with kids was a ‘victim’ with no way of possibly achieving happiness.
Frankly, the movie was very distasteful, and didn’t capture the true struggles of humanity. They were both selfish and unlikeable people – that is why they’re lives were misery leading up to greater misery – not because they didn’t fit in the suburban family system.
The movie was ridiculous.
Geezus, I can’t stand another film about beautiful, wealthy people (in relation to the rest of the world) who suffer from their bounty.
Frankly, I’ll take my dysfunction in “The Squid and The Whale” flavor.
Man, I was depressed and felt like I had to wash my hands after just seeing the previews. I can’t imagine how anyone could actually sit through this thing!
When I was younger, I could never understand my parents love of suburban/small west coast town living. How boring the architecture, I thought. What took me years to realize is, that the greatest generation mostly lived in rural settings; farms and ranches were life was hard. Compounded by the depression, life was harder still. Then, the march to the worlds bloodiest battles of WW2, were seen by too many of these great patriots. After a youth spent under such conditions, the prospect of having a small yard, largely maintenance free house with simple open floor plans, filled with modern conveniences, became perfectly understandable.
But leave it to the left to vilify a hard earned lifestyle; a lifestyle that didn’t resemble their vision of a European, utopian existence. Now in my fifties, the idea of living in a similar way that my parents had, doesn’t seem so unattractive. At least the concept of family was the norm, as it should be.
Have I mentioned how much I love this site?
I don’t know how closely this movie is based upon the book which is its source, but this sums up my reaction to recently reading the novel: “The film’s biggest problem is that it is impossible to give even a hint of a damn about these two contemptible human beings.” That’s exactly what I thought when I read the book.
I found it an incredibly dreary novel about two completely self-centered, vapid people it was impossible to not loathe. When I heard that Winslet and DiCaprio were making the book into a movie (apparently she was enraptured with the novel and became the motivating force behind this project) my only thought was “Why?” The novel ends with a fittingly horrible narcissistic act of self-destruction. If the film does likewise I can only imagine the weariness of its viewers upon exiting the cinema, musing upon the whole point of the thing: No matter what opportunities and blessings you might be given, life is meaningless, pointless and hopeless. Gee, isn’t that just what American audiences need in 2009?
Gah, a drama based on Betty Fridan’s whine about “the problem with no name” in her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique.
Let’s not kid ourselves. In a new age where truth is spin and reality is a show, there is more behind this anti-social propaganda tale than meets the sheepish eye. Revolutionary Road is a heterophobic companion piece to American Beauty in that it demonizes the family bedrock of American society and replaces it with a selfishly miseducational individualism.
There are more singles in the US now than ever. This is by design and not by accident. And negative media messages from depressing movies like this are part of it. I find it ironic in that the sexuality of those who satirize and alienate straight family tradition may be more engineered by Dupont and Monsanto than it is by fate, mother nature or selection.
If auteurs who turn the dream machine into a minority special interest group nightmare only knew poison chemical parents of their sexuality are birth control pills and toxic household cleaners they’d be preparing the biggest class action lawsuit in world history instead of making subtle hate speech films about the evils of love, family and nuclear suburbia.
Wake up, folks. This film is an ad for elitist population control, not real entertainment. They didn’t call the 1950s Happy Days for nothing!
Here is a question for all of the self respecting Alpha Females out there, you know the ones who balance, career, marriage, and family: is there anything about Leonardo DiCaprio any of you find even remotely interesting? Does he strike you as the guy you would want to have rescue you in the same vein as lets say John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, or William Holden? Or Errol Flynn? And does he shave yet? I need to know this.
I am serious. First off the whole premise of this movie is enough to make most people who have priorities steer clear, secondly the only cast member worth anything is Kate Winslett and she should know better. But Leo DiCaprio? I don’t get it. I never have gotten it and I never will. My dog who is neutered is more masculine…
When I was in my teens I dreamt of living in England.I didn't, but I found a nice compromise by taking some trips there.And I'd wanted to be a famous actor, but I've since realized that I can't act.
Yes this movie goes beyond matrimonial unbliss. Kate Winslet's character April and is not simply the attractive bored housewife she has a personality disorder called NPD or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Upon realizing this it can be understood why Kate's character acted a little off. Nothing in the world could ever satisfy the emptiness the narcissist feels or make comprehendable their masterful manipulation and selfishness. They feel nothing and are unable to love only thriving on narcissistic supply. Which for the character April was not happening for her as a housewife and mother. Kate Winslet does a surperb performance really in creating the confusion of her behavior as even some of the audience is apparently confused.
Leonardo's character Frank was the unknowing spouse of a wife with narcissism and their conflicts were the result of her mental illness and finally her death. I found this movie to be on target on this subject as it was never mentioned in any other review but I am curious how the book's/movie'swriter/director is familair with npd (although they left out the sex as an addiction and modified the abuse ) as they as well as Kate nailed this performance.
I just watched Revolutionary Road for the first time tonight and I was looking for other thoughts to help ease my mind out of the rut it was stuck in. Feeling very depressed for a minute there.
I'm a 25-year-old female who is pursuing acting in NYC. I have studied at one of the top schools and seem to be doing okay. I am in a serious relationship with a wonderful man who is very intelligent, inventive and unselfish. He also happens to be from Connecticut and desires a family and a house one day of his own… in CT.
Needless to say I could very much so relate to this movie as I come from CA and very trying childhood experiences and would like to believe that in the U.S we are afforded the ability to put our uniqueness and creativeness to use in a way that could bring great moments of love and understanding to all of our neighbors, friends, family and fellow citizens.
I think part of what is not being spoken about is the support that Kate is trying to offer to her husband in telling him that he is capable of using his life to do something that makes him and in return others happy. Some people do live in fear that they do not have anything to offer and therefore hide behind meaningless jobs and shut themselves out or find other ways to fulfill themselves. It can be confusing for a women who wants to have a family to take care of and make memories with to find that the man she married is only willing to settle… then make up for his settling by finding other ways to make himself a man. These are the parts of the movie that I feel are very honest to many marriages in our day and age. I don't think they are only loathing characters… I wonder what we have to say about our society that it leaves so many feeling trapped or crazy for wanting to offer more of what is inside then just striving for a nice house and all the fixings. She was saying clearly that is not what matters! She wants the true love that is only found when we are true to our souls. Not to the image that we have to wake up each day and do something we hate and find what’s positive just so we can afford a nice home and children. This is why we are all consumers… why nature is left behind and our world is crumbling. Everyone has something inside of him or her to offer. We don't need more big houses to be built and promotions to make more money to buy more stuff. We need to love each other and bring our unique talents, thoughts and interests to life. If we can all share these gifts with each other no one would be at war and shooting up schools and sleeping with each other’s wives. That is what the characters are trying to show you. That it is much more freeing to stop subscribing to the fact that the picture of the American dream is all that is important. It starts with self-confidence and not allowing things to make you afraid… then comes love for another and a true family.
I do however agree that we are capable of deciding our own happiness. Why couldn't she do things during the day that were more fulfilling and why would it make her feel better to be some ones secretary in Paris and come home to a husband who was reading and learning and spending time with the kids… or maybe in Leo's characters case drinking scotch and sleeping with the neighbor. I have a very different conclusion prior to snapping out of the movie's initial impact. Myself, and the majority of people I know are not that weak and pathetic.
I do believe there is a great point about our culture trying to be made. There were many diff things they could have done to send out that message through a better turn around.
Maybe show the neighbors moving to Paris after the shock of the loss and finding it does not change what you can fix on you own.
I feel much better… and thank everyone for his or her responses…
Conclusion… poorly written… not good entertainment. Wonderful acting by everyone involved… wonderful underlining message that was not portrayed appropriately.
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