Revolutionary Road (15)
- Starring: Kate Winslet, Leo Di Caprio
- Director: Sam Mendes
- Duration: 119
- Year: 2009
Adapted from the landmark 1961 novel by Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road is an incisive portrait of an American marriage. The movie features Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as a couple who had big plans in their future but find themselves living the run-of-the-mill life they dreaded.
Reviews
Alison Rowat's Review
Having failed to find their happy ever after at sea in Titanic, Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio try their luck on dry land in Sam Mendes’s elegant but airless Revolutionary Road. From the novel by Richard Yates, Mendes (aka Mr Winslet) has crafted the cinematic equivalent of a coffee-table tome: a glossy work that pleases the eye far more than it feeds the soul.
DiCaprio and Winslet play Frank and April. When they first meet in New York she is an aspiring actress and he is a docker. It’s the Fifties, the beatnik era is dawning, and Frank and April are hip to that beat. They’re both struggling to get ahead, but this is post-war America, a land of infinite possibility, where the future is guaranteed bright or your money back.
Cut to some time later and Frank and April are going at it like Burton and Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It doesn’t take a close-up of their ring fingers to see the pair are now married. April is trying and failing at acting, and Frank hasn’t been slow in letting her know it.
The pattern of the Wheelers’ marriage, with her racing forward regardless and him dragging behind, is established, and there doesn’t seem to be anything to do but accept it with good grace.
Their move to the Connecticut suburbs and the road of the title, though it could be seen as another crushing inevitability, is not presented as such by Mendes. All is sunlight and wonder as the young couple, guided by Mrs Givings the estate agent (Kathy Bates), view their first, proper home.
There’s no panic at this point because the Wheelers believe this is just the start of their adventures together, not the end of the line. Frank, by now commuting to an office job in the city, still fantasises about doing something creative for a living, but this is nothing to April’s big idea – that the couple should move to Paris and start an exciting new life. As children arrive, that dream slowly exits.
Here, as in his Oscar-winning American Beauty, Mendes fancies himself as a bard of suburbia. He wants to show its dark heart, its suffocating conformity, the many shades of despair that dwell beyond the neatly painted facades. In that sense, he could not have chosen better source material than Yates’s novel.
Published in 1961, Revolutionary Road was a warning to baby boomers of what lay ahead should they trade the revolutionary spirit that had built America for an easy life in the ’burbs. The idea was that those who stopped trying had begun the process of dying.
It was as tough and uncompromising a message then as it is now, yet for much of the picture Mendes and his leads struggle to get it across. Part of the problem is that DiCaprio and Winslet are just too golden a pair. In fairness, the Wheelers are meant to be an attractive young couple destined for great things. That’s what makes their suffocation in suburbia so disturbing. But there’s attractive and there’s DiCaprio and Winslet.
He, in particular, is too young for the part. Frank is supposed to look as though he’s being beaten down by dull old life. DiCaprio, however, can barely boast a frown line.
As for Winslet, she looks perfect at the start. And in the middle. And at the end. Certainly, there’s plenty of shouty, Oscar-baiting acting going on to signify torment, but can we believe in these people’s suffering, identify with their trials? Not a lot.
All you need to know about Revolutionary Road is contained in the Oscars nomination list. Everyone concerned with the picture must have hoped for the big awards, but the film is shortlisted in just three categories, including art direction and costume design. In truth, the design of the picture is as flawless as Kate’s skin, as sculpted as Leo’s hair. The clothes are exquisite. Every scene looks more fabulous than the last, but all this perfection dulls the senses after a time.
The last of the three Oscar nominations goes to Michael Shannon as best supporting actor. It’s well-deserved. Indeed, it’s not until Shannon enters proceedings that you appreciate just how lifeless the picture has been until then.
Playing the manic son of Mrs Givings, it’s up to Shannon to deliver a few home truths to the homemakers. It’s a blistering, naturalistic performance that would steal the picture, if not for DiCaprio and Winslet finally getting their own act together.
A scene in which Frank and April, trying to make their marriage work, talk across the breakfast table makes the scalp tingle.
There are no H-bomb revelations, just two people laying themselves bare. Edgy, moving, alive with pain brought to the surface: what a shame the picture didn’t take this path from the start.