Revolutionary Road [Blu-ray] [2008]

The film captures the 1950's well.An idealistic couple, not in the happiest of marriages decide to upsticks & move from America to Paris, France ( despite not speaking French!)The film reunites Kate Winslet & Leonardo DiCaprio in a Sam Mendes film.

This film is an exploration of intimacy, fear, betrayal and love. Brings up the question of how to stay true to ourselves and break the mold that we have contorted ourselves into. It cuts close to the bone even though the film is set in the 1950s.

The first row begins only five minutes into the movie, and they become set pieces at persistent intervals. They are not as ‘bad’ as Richard Burton’s and Elizabeth Taylor’s magnificent arguments in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’, but they are certainly just as well acted, despite Kate’s and Leo’s characters lacking the depth and sophistication of those of Burton and Taylor.Kate and Leo are April and Frank Wheeler, a handsome couple in 1950s America, living the dream in the Connecticut burbs. Whilst Frank works in New York City, April becomes a slowly despairing housewife whose dreams of a more fulfilling life are slowly eroded.For April and Frank have plans to run away from what they tell John, an acquaintance, is “the hopeless emptiness of the whole life here.” John perceptively replies, “People are on to the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” Later, when their plans change, John will accuse Frank of being “too comfy” in his hopeless emptiness. (Sound familiar? I guess we are all too comfortable in our daily grind.) Meanwhile Kate feels that life in the burbs is draining her vitality.It’s an excellent subject for a film, of course, how we are seduced by the prospect of more money to blind ourselves from the pointlessness of earning it. But this film surprisingly, despite all the arguments and traumas contained therein, lacks bite. It has become here an everyday story of an everyday existence. A reviewer in ‘Philosophy Now’ made great play of the existential core of the movie, but existentialism is the essence of the quotidian. It’s all well done, of course, and the acting is faultless.But when compared to another Kate Winslet film of that year, ‘The Reader’, or to the director’s earlier masterpiece, ‘American Beauty’, we can see what is missing from the heart of ‘Revolutionary Road’, and that is tragedy. It is there, of course, but merely latent and undeveloped, or rather it is misplaced or even lost in the edit. In short, and without giving the plot away, the film should have ended at 1:42 – or 1:44 at the latest. Then, maybe, it might have been worth four stars, but the rest of the film after these timings simply supplies an anticlimax, robbing the story of any tragic denouement that the viewer can mull over when they leave the cinema – or leave the living room to make that essential cup of tea.But even so, the film has a mountain to climb because we do not come to love Frank or April Wheeler as we come to love Lester Burnham of ‘American Beauty’. Frank and April come across as beautiful but largely empty people. Sure they have dreams, but they are indistinct; they are the negative dreams of escape rather than the positive dreams of action and intent. They appear to have no interests, not even the most empty-headed hobbies of their class and era such as golf or flower arranging. They are sad and empty people and we thus find it difficult to relate to any sense of tragedy in their lives.As in that earlier Sam Mendes’s film, the soundtrack is provided by Thomas Newman. In ‘Revolutionary Road’ he equals the high standards of the former movie by here employing a haunting three-note figure that is subtly moulded and transformed depending on the atmosphere of the scene.The commentary in the extras is provided by director Sam Mendes (who was at the time married to Kate Winslet) and screenwriter Justin Haythe. They talk much about the book and the differences between it and the final script. They concede that this is a dark film that was never going to be popular. They also saw the house as a character in its own right, first becoming a symbol of freedom but gradually over time becoming Kate’s prison. Finally, Mendes points out the visual ‘Titanic’ joke that is half-hidden in the film. Other extras on my DVD include ten minutes of deleted scenes and a thirty-minute ‘making of’ documentary.

When I first watched this movie it pretty much passed me by. But the theme of the movie, for which I was personally touched, meant that I was too compelled to watch it again, and again and now I've watched it about five times and it seems rather like peeling an onion: it not only draws tears but the layers reveal more and more each time I see it. The film is full of contrast: light meets dark and each make up a whole day but are ultimately separate: two people that do love each other, owed to a relationship largely built on shared dreams for better times ahead, soon find they can't live with each other when those dreams remain unrealised. Yet they can't live without each other either - given the norms of the times where divorce was frowned upon and convenient living took a very very back seat to Christian morality and rigid social conformity, typical of suburban life in the 1950s. Kate Winslet gives a stunning acting performance as the ambitious forward thinking suburban housewife who is 'saddled' with two kids - one a mistake - that she certainly never did and still doesn't want her entire life to revolve around. She wants to be free to step out of her comfort zone to live a life of adventure and support her husband in fulfiling his dreams and ambitions too, once he finds out what he wants to do. Yet, DeCaprio as her conformist husband Frank, whose dreams for living a true life were once there when he first met and married April are never truly re-awakened now that his role of family man has bedded in - not helped by a feeling of obligation to his father's memory to live out his career as a Knox man and his breadwinner's obligation to provide for his growing family. To put it another way, April was willing to bash down the Berlin wall of her restricted world, to save her own sanity, but her husband did not have the nerve to venture into new unfamiliar territory and find out what he truly wanted from the world and from life and would rather believe that his wife was insane to still want that. Night becomes day, day becomes night....in Frank's not so brave new world.The line that sticks in my mind, as expertly delivered by a desperate, tearful April Wheeler is this: "you know what is so good about the truth Frank? No one forgets what it is, no matter how long they've lived without it, they just get better at lying." To April night remains dark and day remains in daylight.If you haven't read it yet, buy the book: "Feel the fear and do it anyway". The message is simple. If a chance comes your way, just grab it and run with it. At the end of the film you see April taking on the role of Stepford wife for the day by trying to model her existence on her husband's day is night world but it was a price that was far too high for her to pay and ultimately darkness was all that was left for her.

Design was perfect, acting was phenomenally good from all characters. Very well made film indeed but I watched this to be entertained and found myself irritated by the thin plot. Basically pre-feminism set up (1955) with 30-something suburban American couple discovering that they are fully paid up card carrying members of the rat race with their enviably beautiful house in a gorgeous wooded leafy suburb in Connecticut. They decide to give it all up and go to Paris with their two children because life will obviously be so much more exciting there. So the wife (Winslett) expresses excitement about swapping her stay at home Mom life for that of a typist in a typing pool at one of the international organisations based in Paris - wow how exciting! Never mind that NATO (which they mention) is not in Paris but Brussels or that generally these organisations require applicants to be fluent in a couple of languages. I kept wondering why they didn't just go on holiday to have a look first. It was very improbable. Was expecting more from the director of masterpiece American Beauty. The pace dragged somewhat too. Predictable, Sylvia Plath flavoured angst.