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In the Revolutionary Road, there live Frank and April Wheeler, an idealistic young couple, who manage a dreaming start of their life after the post-war, America in the mid 1950s. They have bought a new house, considered themselves different from their dull, ‘unsophisticated’ neighbors, and have a couple of kids running in the yard. But, the idyllic principles vanish when April fails to be an actress with embarrassment and can’t well see her role as the housewife. And Frank thinks he has the most boring job in the world. They can’t afford to hold on the pressure of living as perfect as the plan, cause in fact they’re “just like everyone else.” The supposedly once harmonious couple now becomes quarrelsome. Days and days are passed through explicit sharp conversations directly meant to hurt each other and strike each other’s weaknesses.

However, they do start another dream by having a huge plan to move to France, where April hopes she can use her ability as a secretary and shorthand, and also Frank may ‘find’ himself again and gets some real job. But, the unwanted pregnancy ruins it all again. And now there is no compensation. Everything is beyond measure. The relationship has, thus, turned from distrust into hatred. Sam Mendes brilliantly elaborates the fight scenes with wincing dialogs, acts, and vivid descriptions. The condition makes us believe that the era they’re living in is really reluctant to peace and serenity. Or in the words of Joyce Carol Oates: “the sad, gray, deathly world.”

The characters are not at all flawless (but the acting is). They drink too much and smoke regularly. They are mostly sarcastic but show the fake sweet things before each other’s nose (except for John Givings, of course. And that is because he is insane. But, it seems to me that he’s the one who remains ‘sane’ in the story). Perhaps, Frank and April are not the lovable characters like Jack and Rose in Titanic, but they are utterly plausible. They may have been living around us. Although the narrator stresses on Frank, who actually loses ‘everything’ in the end, the movie somewhat puts the blame on April’s shoulder. And what left is irony.

A husband and wife argue with each other for nearly two hours about whether or not they should move to Paris.
Pros: It’s France!
Cons: They don’t speak French, their kids don’t speak French, they aren’t sure they’ll be able to get a job, a house, or have any kind of future, and, apparently, Leo doesn’t even want to go that bad.
Sounds like a pretty good movie, right?
Though, not exactly tragic in the proper sense of the word.

Saya harus akui kalau film ini memang TOTAL bukan untuk konsumsi umum. Revolutionary Road adalah murni sebuah film untuk:
a. Para pecinta film-film bertema depressing
b. Para pecinta film-film beralur lambat
c. Para pecinta Leonardo DiCaprio dan Kate Winslet, atau
d. Para pecinta film yang dibintangi oleh Leonardo DiCaprio dan Kate Winslet yang bertema depressing dan beralur lambat.

Maka dari itu, bagi mereka yang berharap kalau film ini akan membawa kembali berbagai memori indah nan syahdu a la Jack dan Rose lewat Titanic, please… stay away from this movie.

Bagi saya, film-nya gak mengecewakan. Sama seperti menonton The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, atau No Country for Old Men, atau There Will Be Blood. Oscar material? Sure! Walau kualitas film ini tidak akan sampai menyentuh pada level Best Picture. Yang gak banyak orang tahu kalo film ini adalah sebuah “terjemahan” dari novel klasik superrrrrrrrrr berat karya Richard Yates, berjudul sama, Revolutionary Road. Mungkin karena faktor itu tadi yang membuat Sam Mendes sedikit terbebani. Faktor klasik-nya novel tadi.

Anyway, saya masih bisa menangkap sedikit gaya penyutradaraan Mendes yang mirip dengan apa yang dilakukannya di American Beauty terdahulu, walaupun pada Revolutionary Road sisi black comedy dari Mendes benar-benar dihilangkan. Cinematography film ini, karya Roger Deakins, juga jagoan. Mampu menangkap “kesunyian” Revolutionary Road, plus menggabungkannya dengan suasana hati para penghuninya, yang memang gloomy semua.

Bukan karya terbaik dari Mendes, namun akting DiCaprio, Winslet (terutama Winslet), dan aktor pendukung Michael Shannon di film ini, mungkin, adalah salah satu akting terbaik mereka selama ini.

Rate: 4 / 5

Passé la première demi-heure, qui a tendance à être un peu démonstrative, tout se cristallise quand la crise de couple explose. Dans ce film complexe à la mise en scène et au jeu d’acteur de haut niveau, Mendes explore la crise de couple de la banlieue américaine dans une autopsie sanglante, celle d’un couple confronté à des idéaux contradictoire. Le délitement quotidien fini par imposer une réflexion de fond sur les conventions sociales et comment on y échappe – ou pas.

Un film qui repose des questions et c’est certainement en cela qu’il est le plus réussi.

Adotando um verniz de introspecção maturada passados nem dez anos anos de sua estreia como cineasta, debruçando-se sobre o estilhaçar da ilusão do “sonho americano” num subúrbio de Connecticut na década de 1950, Mendes explora o choque de aspirações entre um jovem casal de mentalidade progressista (DiCaprio e Winslet, nunca melhores), cujas partes estão cada uma em busca de si próprias há algum tempo, sem sucesso, o que ocasiona uma grave crise marital. Deixados de lado os floreios estilísticos exuberantes e a verve que tornaram Beleza Americana um marco moderno, a aposta recai na sobriedade para pintar um quadro revelador da hipocrisia numa sociedade contentada com falsas aparências, porém resiliente o bastante para sufocar aspirações individuais. Assistir à gradual dissolução do casamento dos protagonistas, enquanto se torce pelo remédio de um final feliz, é uma experiência angustiante.

[Author’s note: Originally published on my blog at hpaulmoon.com]

What can you say about online reviews? It’s a promising concept, especially for the older generations who would still call it “new,” but it’s ultimately a behavior that ranges from sloppy short to endless chatty, all beyond the reproach of publication and promotion that normally save readers from experiences in mediocrity. And yet, publication and promotion themselves have gotten into the wrong hands these days (read: media conglomerates), so what the hell.

And even so, I would not saunter into this hermeneutic hash save for just getting kicked in the ass by the only business still open in a snowed-in small town: the cinema house, our collective campfire, America’s billion-dollar marketplace of ideas – the movie theatre. “Revolutionary Road” is a canker-sore of a movie helmed by the medium’s most pretentious poseur Sam Mendes who in turn is clearly whipped by his gorgeous wife Kate Winslet who in turn cannot, under his direction, possibly do wrong. I am beginning with that because I have written about movies in the past only to hear, most often, that it is impossible to tell whether I liked them.

But what I really want to begin with is a stipulation, that being enraged by a film is not necessarily a revelation of unsettled psychosis, nor the slam-dunk fulfillment of a director’s vision to create art that stimulates different reactions from different points of view. We would do well to defend ourselves readily from that kind of elitism. Artists always create with a specific agenda (their own revolutionary road), and the extent to which they would deny this is the extent to which they themselves suffer unsettled psychoses. The notion that “all great art must affect people differently” is the tired rhetoric of community college English literature adjunct professors, who are most often found taking that vow because at some point they finally understood Beowulf after their twentieth read-through, and now live to tell. But I digress…

The briefest background on “Revolutionary Road” is that it re-interprets a classic Richard Yates novel from the same point of view that resulted in “American Beauty,” which won the hearts of the Hollywood Establishment in the year 2000 and resulted in an Oscar slaughter for Sam Mendes and crew. You can think of “Revolutionary Road” as a prequel if you share the simple-minded view of Mr. and Mrs. Mendes (from across the Atlantic no less) that there is some sort of definable “American dream,” and moreover that it is the stuff of great drama.

And the problem is, it isn’t. Not even if it exists. So we look for something more in “Revolutionary Road.” Why is this marriage so fragile? What prevents Frank and April Wheeler from finding real fulfillment? If the peril is not to be found in some villainous American dream, then I propose it is in the American pandemic of relativism against something so orthodox that mainstream filmmakers can only shrug: morality.

The ironic trick that I find almost comical here is that Mendes winds up concocting a simple morality tale, surely against his aim but roughly within the vision of Yates’ 1961 novel. Knowing that the contemporary aspiration of much movie making is to “punk rock” out from any attempt at moral structure (think of the awesome subversive violent power of Green Day, then finish popping your bubblegum) – there are a few things we know better about marriage. First, it is utterly unnatural. The animal kingdom (from which men and women can claim no exemption) would risk extinction by staying monogamous, right? Under that chaos, you also have the fact that marriage introduces extraordinary layers of vulnerability for the initiated. That is to say, emotions become open sores within a marriage when they would otherwise be as turtles that can readily regress into their shells. And another thing: Marriage is, of course, a decision to compromise. It is not a compromise of good decisions – but if that is how it’s understood, the marriage may be doomed to fail.

So why do people even bother? I have a rich memory from the days when Bill Maher hosted a show called Politically Incorrect and when he had some real credibility as a classical liberal rather than a hitman for the Democratic Party. My favorite living composer, Philip Glass, was one of the motley guests, and Mr. Maher – himself a frequent guest of Hugh Hefner’s crib – introduced the idea that marriage as an institution is utterly obsolete. Maestro Glass, in his usual zen demeanor (a Tibetan-Buddhist-lapsed-Jew-math-genius, repeat that measure 42 times prestissimo), could only offer a simple sentiment – minimalist, if you will: People keep doing it, so what can we say? And he could be read to say, that these are not just plumbers and taxicab drivers (though he had been those things too between the years of math and music); these are highly educated people who associate visions of sunsets with deep philosophical eurekas and psychic self-awareness. In other words, not folk who git hitched jes cuz. All of that insight was met with cocked heads and nods, but what made it memorable is that Maher suddenly got confused, looked down at his blue notecard, checked it again and exclaimed, “But it says here you’re on your fifth marriage!”

Was the great Philip Glass even qualified to opine about marriage, having divorced so many times? (As chronicled in a new documentary, his subsequent fifth also failed.) Well, who knows? There are seventy-times-seven reasons a marriage could fail, starting with the basic defiance of nature that I mentioned earlier. And you can keep going down the list by tuning into daytime gab-fests. However, what brings us back to “Revolutionary Road” is the simple fact of no controversy, that the fastest and surest way to end a marriage is to violate it with another body, outside the marriage. Adultery is the monarch of all harbingers, the Talmud of consequence, the hairline fracture in a trembling zeppelin. (And God help me before my prose goes past purple…)

If nothing else, the critical failing of “Revolutionary Road” (and the failing of critics who have lavished praise) is that this nasty trump card is a matter of small detail to Frank and April. Here you can see at work the great option available to the cineaste, whose visual sleight-of-hand can violate any page of literature’s meticulous attempt to depict the reality above, and below, and inside a scene. What you would see in “Revolutionary Road,” if you chose to torture yourself with a screening, are blank reactions to confessions of adultery that are utterly un-human, let alone un-animal (we cannot deny that beasts are jealous). Truly, Bjork got it right when she sang, “There’s definitely definitely definitely no logic to human behaviour,” and the human beast will cover the gamut in its contraindications. But there is no doubt that “Revolutionary Road” is a novel by Mr. Richard Yates and not a case study by Dr. Oliver Sacks. In other words, Kate Winslet in particular is doing either a great job at depicting a sociopath, or a poor job at depicting the character devised by Yates. In spite of the latter truth, nothing can stop her performance from being honored next month as the absolute finest among many thousands supposedly being weighed by the keepers of the golden statue. The cowboy media engine that is Hollywood bespeaks a level of sophistication that would attend a ballet with cheers for acrobatic feats, but boredom for narrative, nuanced movement that would abandon tired routines of twirling and tip-toeing en pointe.

From Sam Mendes’ reading and especially his wife’s award-winning performance, Frank and April represent quite clearly the fundamental struggle that defines whether a marriage will or will not survive: satisfaction. (Women’s Studies academic programs are incapable of seeing this story any other way, of course, and the sad truth is that mainstream America has pretty much become her bedfellow.) Hours and hours of psychotherapy may associate broader concepts like compatibility, sexuality, filial dysfunction and so on, but ultimately the centerpiece of the contemporary divorce is the “I don’t get no.”

Frank and April are not satisfied with a whole list of things: they wanted a nice big house but now they hate the suburbs; Frank hates his sales job yet April fashions a doctrine that he is destined for higher callings than mere commerce; April believes that her own true calling is to be an actress yet it cannot possibly be her talents at fault (it must be the shackles of marriage); and of course, for the big kill, Frank and April are not satisfied with each other. They used to feel bliss, through the haze of courtship, but as things evolved they simply moved right along from dissatisfaction between themselves, to sexual satisfaction from others. You cannot say that their affairs alone damned their marriage, while you certainly cannot say that the adultery was one little vial among the rack of toxins.

That litany of dissatisfactions has something plainly and simply in common with the social attitude, psychological dogma, and divorce rate of our time: lack of gratitude (and its companions “humility” and “awe”). Whatever your faith background may be, you cannot deny that the most frequent guest lecturer at the American nuptial is the Christian Apostle Paul, who had more to say than that love is greater than faith, hope and charity. When he wrote “but now abideth” to preface that famous last verse of the chapter, he necessarily allocated the smaller ecstasy to what we can taste and see in our darkly-lit lives; he really means to contrast the penultimate verses: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

We are a world of animals who can hardly see anything of Heaven, caught as we are in our eternal quest for a fountain of youth that would spurt every vain satisfaction: passion, beauty, newness, pleasure. We are still children who touch the hot stove time and time again, even though mommy said that we would get burned. We are vigilant about what we do not have, while reliably ignorant about what we could lose.

Even as I began to write this monstrously long tome (“review?”), I found myself in a “cranky” state of mind, having been booked for one thing and another on a business trip through the Midwest, and found every event canceled because of an ice storm that has been recorded as the most destructive ever. It started during my visit to Mayfield, Kentucky and did not stop for a week, as I chased electricity from one town to the next and plumbed for vacant motel rooms. I even suffered the great indignity of anxiously putting my phone number on a waiting list for a motor inn called “Hospitality House” in Union City, Tennessee! But when God answered my desperate cry for help and I got that magic call back, it was later that night, in the tacky room with floral-print polyester bed sheets and a clacking heater, that I sulked in front of my television and watched local news segments: One after another, camera crews would blare their battery-powered lights onto the rooms of low-income houses, asking people how they’re staying warm. The answers were far away from my state of mind – since I had never experienced a power outage for more than a few minutes, I had been conjuring cynical theories that the utility companies were not being efficient or not even showing up for work. As I thought these things, with my tacky bed sheets and loud heater keeping me un-stylishly warm, I saw and heard these people speak into the camera that they were just thankful to have each other, to keep each other warm. Not just for my few minutes, but for days and days of freezing temperature and no assurance of anything, anytime to come.

That is marriage, and all of life. People are wired to understand that, or they are not. And the great spoiler of “Revolutionary Road” is that April kills herself by trying to abort the baby that she conceived with a man who fails to satisfy her. There can be no doubt that the scene packages sympathy rather than disdain, of the kind smarmy and academic: This is what happens in a world that condemns, that draws moral boundaries, that entraps women into domestic roles. This is the tragedy of precious people who by some stellar exception to human birth are not meant to live integrated lives. This is what it would be like for you, sitting as you do in your velour theater seat, if only you woke up and saw what the artist-caste sees from the luxury of living without limits – it is the Nietzschean enlightenment of a soul that knows the vanity of boundaries, but cannot escape society’s torturous moral order.

Against that backdrop of bunny ranch seduction, what remains visible through a glass, darkly, is an irreligious moral order that you will or will not believe was gifted from a god…or God. Thus whether you call it divine intervention or just part of a social compact, cold-blooded immorality remains mostly rarified behavior among those in society who possess a mere competent understanding of civility. But we still quest for that fountain of youth, with pop culture’s cheap megaphones to nourish the journey, and there is much suffering in the knowledge of what we lack. Yet by some kind of magical osmosis, the fountain ultimately finds its aim to Heaven. And that brings us back to what I started with, the idea that “Revolutionary Road” suffers an ironic twist: Frank and April, together with the cineastes behind them, get their just desserts. This is not to say that death and despair for the free spirits (and their tabloid break-ups to boot) amount to vengeance fulfilled. Rather, there is always the possibility of humble witness, met with likelihood of rejection. That’s how we roll. And that is the literary allusion of Armageddon that came as a vision to a prisoner in a cave in our first century A.D.; or for that matter, it is the endless history of humanity turning away from enlightenment. Of course, I would only be a fool to think of myself, with all the tragic arrogance of the “Revolutionary Road” protagonists, as above it all. These days, even as I am landlocked in the Midwest, I see myself as something more like Richard Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman,” who roams the opens seas in search of faithfulness. I am writing this long-winded thesis alone.

If you’ve made it this far, your endurance is stronger than mine were I a fresh reader, in mind of the assumption I started with here – that online writings basically amount to unfettered yammering. But if you were expecting that this would be some kind of movie review, I’d say skip it for sure, and go spend your money on something else. Amen, and amen.

Mendes gives us the full spectrum of monogamous relationships in this film. From the optimistic burgeoning nuclear family, to the delirious young parents discontent with their love, and the experienced couple who have learned how to peacefully co-exist whilst retaining individuality.

The core messages of this film are didactically summarised in some pivotal one-liners.

“Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”

“It takes backbone to lead the life you want to lead.”

Moreover, these messages are unnoticeably belabored by the powerful performances by the cast and the constantly unrequited plot developments. April in particular lives perpetually within the subjunctive mood.

Everyone, in a relationship or not, should be moved by this film and take something from it.

Sam Mendes vuelve al tema que mas alegrias le dió: la destrucción de la idea de “American Dream Of Life”. Esta vez, se escapa de las situaciones contempóraneas de “American Beauty” y se decide por la adaptación de una novela de Richard Yates, lo que lo obliga a situar su pelicula en la década de los 50’s, la cima de la construcción americana de establilidad familiar y económica, o, lo que es lo mismo, los inicios del sueño americano. Sin embargo, hasta ahi llegan las diferencias con su ópera prima. Los suburbios americanos no parecen haber cambiado tanto: detras de toda esa idea de estabilidad, de amor comprensible, de afectos, de “home-sweet-home” y de la estampita de familia perfecta, se esconden las miserias, los secretos, los engaños, los conflictos.

“Revolutonary Road”, entonces, habla de todo lo que hablan las peliculas que tratan el tema de lo disfuncional en el seno de una familia. Sin emabargo, y aca es donde la pelicula de Mendes se eleva un poco, es el personaje de Kate Winslet el que se encarga de dar vuelta todo el asunto. Sin en “American Beauty” era el personaje de Kevin Spacey el que se rebelaba (y el que se revelaba, asi, con v corta, por qué no), contra esa impostura de las buenas costumbres, de lo correcto, del hacer de cuenta de que “todo esta bien” y sonreimos para la cámara, aca es esa April Wheeler la que se quiere llevar todo por delante. Ella es la que quiere escapar de ese encierro suburbano que parece arrastrarla hasta la incomodidad mas desquiciada, y que le exige todo el tiempo estar al borde de lo incorrecto y, muhcas veces, hasta aplicarlo. Es ella la que quiere irse a Paris, con el fin de que la esperanza vuelva a surgir, y que, finalmente, la estampita se haga realidad. Obviamente que nada de esto sucede, sino que las cosas (porque la vida es asi, viste), siempre se complican mas y no hay nada mas dificil que hacer que dos personas conecten, se acerquen, se quieran. No hay forma nartural para que esto suceda. Y “Revolutionary Road” propone dos excepciones para eso: o te volves loco o bien le subis el volúmen a la radio y hacés que la voz de tu mujer se apague lentamente. No hay otras posibilidades. O si, la hay. Pero es la extrema, el punto sin retorno que es al que April, en estado de desqucio extremo y en total concordancia con su estado animico a lo largo de toda la pelicula, va a llevar a cabo.

Mas allá de cierta impostura por momentos muy teatral y con cierta tendencia a las sibreactuaciones en algunos personajes (Winselt parece haber estudiado y luego aplicado incesantemente el "pequeño Gena Rowlands Ilustrado y Di Caprio esta mas Jack Nicholson que nunca), “Revolutionary Roads” es una buena pelicula, si, pero que podria haber estado mucho mejor si hubiese soltado esa impostura tan politicamente correcta que se le rebalsa y haber dado rienda suelta a la April Wheller que todos llevamos adentro.

Sam Mendes directs another feature about a family, this time not dysfunctional, but slowly cracking at the seams. We’re thrown back to the 1950’s to a rather successful nuclear family who try their best to put on the perfect show for all those around them. It’s only until Kate Winslet convinces her husband, Leonardo DiCaprio, to quit his soul-devouring 9-to-5 job that he hates so much and to pursue his dreams, this dream consisting of moving to Paris and letting his wife work and pay the bills, which will give DiCaprio plenty of time to re-experience life and finally figure out what he really wants to do.

All seems to go well, until about ten minutes (even less) into the film we see the couple on a car ride after a play starring Winslet bombs and received negative comments from its audience members. The good husband tries to comfort his sad wife, while making sure she knows that yeah, the play did kind of suck. They pull over and they start to bicker back and forth. Leonardo is furious and goes to hit his wife, pulls his fist back, punches his car instead which only hurts him and infuriates him more. It’s this scene that made me certain that Sam Mendes has done it again with Revolutionary Road.

Their relationship crumbles and that crazy guy from Bug shows up, only to be once again type-cast as a lunatic, but hey, he does a good job. The one image that stands out most to me (and I’m sure it’s probably the same with most people who see this film) is towards the ending, Winslet being framed by the sunlight filtering in through the open-shades window, light pouring around her, with that red stain on her dress by her pelvic area. I felt so horrible when this came onto the screen that I immediately rewatched the movie again after the ending credits finished rolling. And then there’s the man who turns his hearing aid off, which goes to show, once again, that you never can truly know what somebody is thinking.

I thought this film was really well done. The color scheme is dull, reflecting on the dismal setting of American 1950s suburban culture warp, and foreshadowing the obvious imminent doom. Kate and Leo are great together, scraping back and forth between hopeful passion (kitchen sex anyone?) and those beautifully arranged screaming matches. The film is not a happy one, but a refreshingly bittersweet impression of the era. And Michael Shannon deserved more recognition for his portrayal of the insane son of the Wheelers’ friends who magnifies and calls into question every problem that Frank and April weren’t sure they were having. Overall, I thought this was a very coherent and well-directed film about disillusionment and disappearing hope. While very little actually happens, it’s an examination of how constrained and unfulfilled a lot of peoples’ lives were at that time. What it’s trying to say is that, if you lose sight of your dreams, than you have lost your personality. If you don’t have something to work for, something that makes you happy, who are you? This film poses this question, but doesn’t attempt to answer it. And I think that’s answer enough.

Here it is, the start of suburban sprawl. So many people will look at it as success—the ability to survive and raise a family away from crime, in a neighborhood that thrives on wholesome love and friendship. But as anyone can tell you today, most of that is a complete façade, a mask hiding the troubles and anger and regret that everyone feels—that need for more, and a way out of the rut of living without living. What Revolutionary Road does is peel back that layer where it concerns the Wheelers, a young couple that is looked up to by everyone in their social circle. Loving, two children, a supporting husband, and a beautiful wife—they’re the idyllic white picket fence dream. Except for the inner struggles both Frank and April fight each day, looking at their present and only seeing a future full of mediocrity and safety; the excitement of young love full of hope, where the sky was the limit, all but gone. Once that first child is born, you need to begin living for someone else, putting yourself in the backseat. Sometimes that life just isn’t for all of us.

The novel for which this film is adapted from is also the material loosely utilized for the television show “Mad Men”. While these two entities differ greatly, the underlying structural problems about marriage and the meaning of success couldn’t be more similar. Sure Jon Hamm’s Don Draper is a confident man that buried his past to become the man he thought he wanted to be and Leonardo DiCaprio is a beaten man stuck in a job he hates in order to be the husband he thinks he needs to be, but the end result—breaking from their vows to add a little excitement and memory of life when all they had to worry about was themselves—is a mirror image of the other. Tightly wound and stressful to no end, Frank and April Wheeler are at a very dangerous crossroads. Finally getting on the other’s nerves, beginning to think that maybe their marriage was rushed into after a chance encounter at a party, the relationship has escalated to shouting matches that attempt to get the other to snap first. It is only the hastily hatched plan of moving to Paris, starting anew with that fervor they both fell in love with from the other the first time, that gets them back on track with a glimmer of hope for the future.

Business is booming, the computer generation is burgeoning, and money has become the driving force for life. With advertising and sales entrenching themselves into daily routine, people are finding themselves brainwashed to the idea that a perfect home life means having the big house, nice car, multiple children, and dinner on the table each night. If that dream means working a job you don’t respect or pretending your life locked inside your house raising the kids who forced you to move to the suburbs in the first place, well, you make do. As my favorite character, and probably the most important voice in the entire film, says, “most people know the emptiness, it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” Michael Shannon’s John Givings, a friend’s son, recently admitted to an insane asylum, hits the nail on the head. Most couples going through the motions know the void they are filling with material goods and lies to themselves and each other, but very few understand the fact that once you find yourself in that world, it becomes a descent into quicksand, almost impossible to find that joy you once saw in front of you so long ago.

This man’s insanity also plays a huge role in the film due to the fact that, in my opinion, he is the sanest character here. He understands what it means to be free from the constraints of society, but for some reason humanity got lost on its journey, eventually deeming freedom to be an unattainable dream. To live without inhibitions is insanity while slaving away every last fiber of your being becomes the sane thing to do. This fact is shown completely naked through the eyes of DiCaprio’s Frank and Kate Winslet’s powerful turn as April. By discovering how much what she does hurts her, how much what her contemporaries say she should be doing destroys her will to go on, she slowly finds herself spiraling into depression, becoming vacant and hysterical. The final act, John Givings’ last visit to the Wheeler house until the next morning’s surreally off-kilter mood and action, is absolutely devastating to experience. You can’t help but see yourself in their shoes, watching as the weight of conformity finally becomes too much to prop above the necessity to fly.

And Sam Mendes really gets every bit right, even those heavily debated subjects some people might not want to face. At first, I began to think how much could have been improved if say Todd Field directed this story, but after further thought realized it wouldn’t have been as effective. While it doesn’t contain the amount of humor the audience I saw it with thought, there are a lot of laughs included, both adding to the awkwardness of some situations and deflecting from the sheer dramatic gravitas portrayed at many moments. I especially loved the moments where Mendes slowed the camera down, just a bit, and superimposed a beautiful orchestral score above while muting the sounds of the actions on screen. Utilized when April and Shep dance at a bar and later during Frank’s heart-wrenching experience of being completely helpless, this effect is successful and never heavy-handed. Sometimes it takes tragedy to wake yourself from the nightmare of solitude that you thought was a dream of happiness, and Revolutionary Road puts that revelation in your face, hopefully to watch now so as not to allow it to occur to yourself in real life.