As Superb as it is Depressing. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
Written: Aug 12 '09 (Updated Aug 12 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Incredibly performances by Shannon, Bates, Winslet and Decaprio. Flawlessly captures psychology of the time.
Cons: Lock away the razor blades and sleeping pills.
The Bottom Line: Intense Psychostudy of 1955 mores and pressures. Incredibly good.
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| talyseon's Full Review: Revolutionary Road |
Revolutionary Road (2009) Directed by Sam Mendes
"Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness." John Givings.
Frank and April Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) are a young couple just moving in to their first house, located on Revolutionary Road. They are a part of the American Dream; a home in the suburbs, two kids, a job with the same company as his father.
They both hate their lives.
He hates his job, a cubicle farmer for a business machines company. She hates the boring conformity that she sees all around them, the wasted potential women, and the boring status quo. But where do you go when what you want to get away from is everything?
April has an idea. Paris. That is the one place Frank says he was genuinely happy, where people lived to feel things. They will take their savings, the proceeds from the house, the car, and move to Paris; she will get a secretarial job at one of the embassies and support them while Frank decides what he wants to be. It is foolish, childish, strangely compelling. Eventually Frank is persuaded. That is April's present to Frank for his 30th birthday.
His present to himself was a nooner with one of the girls from the secretarial pool. His guilt is immense.
But there is a liberating lift to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and his flippant rewrite of copy rejected by Toledo is not only accepted, it puts him on the fast track. Complication.
And April gets pregnant. Further complication.
This is an intense human drama. It is flawlessly period; the late forties to mid fifties and the acting is amazing. The action is internal, there are no fights, no explosions, and the only chase is on foot, through parkland.
The plight of the Wheelers is highlighted (and overshadowed) by two ancillary characters. Helena Givings (Kathy Bates) is the real estate agent that helped them find their perky little house on Revolutionary Road. She is a member of the society, hell, an exemplar of the society that is stifling the wheelers. And her son, John (Michael Shannon) is a mathematician with emotional problems. Helena imposes on the Wheelers to help her son ease back into social situations. He is currently in a sanitarium, but making progress.
John has incredibly clear insight, and no capability to edit what he says. The Wheeler's note with some surprise, and a touch of chagrin that the first person who understands their desire to escape to Paris is the guy on a pass from the Loony Bin.
But as things get better for Frank; more money, promotion, etc, things get worse for April. She can feel Paris slipping away, and you come to understand Frank finding himself is the only hope she sees for their marriage. In Paris, as the bread winner, she would have a life with scope, one where she can exercise her vital faculties. And Frank might discover his niche as well.
But Frank is having less and less reason to go, and April feels the walls of hopeless emptiness closing in, cutting off all escape.
This is a depressing movie. There is not a single person in here with out some sort of repressed desperation driving their lives. And the only person who sees it clearly is the guy getting electroshock.
It is incredibly well done; amazingly even. The music fits in and builds every scene, the acting is unbelievable (the Givings far outstrip the stars, the Wheelers, in that regard) and totally on target, and the psychological study shows you exactly why we had the hippies....
Quiet desperation. Hopeless emptiness. Each person in the film shows the same symptoms. Each has their own way of dealing with it. Or not, as the case might be. Denial, conformity, grousing, revisionist history, or turning down the hearing aid, we all do what it takes to get through.
Now, a movie that is both unrelentingly good and unrelentingly depressing is a mixed bag. If you are in the right frame of mind, it is a wealth of insight into the era and the psychology of the times. It is great for Psych Majors, History Majors and anyone who loved The Pianist. But if you are on antidepressants, either double the dose, or give this a pass.
If you can take it, it is brilliant, touching, moving. If you can take it.
"Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness." John Givings.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Serious Movie
Worst Part of this Film: Pacing
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