Movie Review
Revolutionary Road
"Revolutionary Road" (quality rating: 9 out of 10) Director: Sam Mendes Screenplay: Justin Haythe, based on the 1961 Richard Yates cult novel. Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates Time: 1 hr., 59 min. Rating: R (vulgarity, nudity, some sexual content) (1:59)
Emotionally violent, relentlessly probing, "Revolutionary Road" is a tenaciously gripping movie. Its performances are sculpted perfection.
That is, depending on whether you have any kind of memory of, or understanding of, the particular new American society of the early 1950s. That important, but not indispensable, element is one reason why the film has been in only limited release, there being some doubts as to audience numbers. Yet another is that this is a boldly offbeat entry which relies, to an audacious degree, on conversation almost alone. And finally, national critics' circle are very prone to political correctness and the film, later on (I can't reveal specifics, of course) delivers a highly politically incorrect and powerful dramatic event.
The film has a subtle pulse that beats, from the opening frame, with a sense that there is something very wrong between husband and wife Frank and April Wheeler. On the face of it, with his secure commuter job in Manhattan and her complete loving motherhood of their young daughter and son, all should be just fine. Their neighbors are nice. Their house is nice.
But they are two creative people and this life is intellectually and creatively suffocating. Their deep gut emotions are beginning to erupt in a volcano of recriminations. With brilliantly directed interactions and fine-tuned performances, DiCaprio and Winslet respond to each other like thumping drums. They can have your own heart skipping beats. Both are up to radiating their characters' deepest fears, their constant struggle with unbridled dreams and social strictures.
Supporting players are perfectly on-target immediately. Motivations, off the top and deep-seated, are crystal clear.
Set in 1955, only a short time after World War II ended, American upper-middle-class society was seeing something very new, with unimaginable implications: the rise of a social compulsion to conformity, especially in suburban-commuter communities. IBM became the dominant cradle-to-grave cocoon, a force which encapsulated suburbia with an obligatory "contentment" on everybody, regardless of how you saw "happiness."
Here we have loving Frank and April Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet) settled into their Connecticut suburb as Frank commutes to his unfulfilling work at a huge Manhattan business machines firm (obviously a spin on IBM). This life of moral and creative confinement is getting to Frank rapidly, almost as fast to his wife. She suggests, in all seriousness, that they just drop everything and move to Paris. She'll work, he'll find himself. Frank does not know how to face himself with this.
There is a fast welling rage between them, Frank fearing a loss of masculinity in the plan. He is, meantime, carrying on a thing with his secretary Maureen (Zoe Kazan) at the office, this with sexist domination overtones. He is plagued by what he feels is the hypocrisy in suburban values and mandates. Is this a "trap," really, or a limitation of his own making. Whatever, his love with April is converting to mutual contempt.
Other personalities include peaceful, adjusted neighbors (David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn) and dominering local realtor Helen Givings (Kathy Bates). She has a clinically insane son John Givings (Michael Shannon) who, in the frequent clarity of insanity, has a gift for piercing the phoniness of individuals and, embarrassingly, revealing the truth to them when neither they nor their friends will. That's why he's considered loony.
Meantime, Frank has just been offered a huge promotion of position and salary, throwing the Paris plans into turmoil. He and April fly at each other in fury. But a creepy mood settles over them the next morning.
Marty Meltz is at http://www.martymoviereviews.com 30-year former films critic for the Award-winning Portland (Maine) Sunday Telegram. Offering right-to-the-point reviews that address directly the question of the film's entertainment value to you. Films have personalities. It doesn't matter who wrote it, who directs it, who stars in it, if it doesn't reach out to you at your deepest levels. I examine its honesty and intelligence. Are you being respected, or are you being jerked around? How much did the film take on as a challenge? Did it pick up its point and run with it? Did you care about it? Does it care about you?
Article Source: Marty Meltz
Movie Review: Revolutionary Road