Revolutionary Road
Rated: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Starring:
Kate Winslet - April Wheeler
Leonardo DiCaprio - Frank Wheeler
Michael Shannon - John Givings
Kathy Bates - Mrs. Helen Givings
Richard Easton - Mr. Howard Givings
David Harbour - Shep Campbell
Kathryn Hahn - Milly Campbell
I have to admit to a personal bias against white middle-class suburban dramas. I feel that while real white middle-class suburban dwellers (or "CHUDs") may have deeply felt problems, none of them feel so pressing as to require major motion picture dramatization. The unhappiness of a marriage, as earth-shattering as it may be to that family, bores everyone else. Revolutionary Road takes this banal situation and pushes it to painfully ridiculous levels by focusing on the "troubles" of the Wheelers, a couple in their thirties who decide to go to Paris or bust, and by "bust", I mean throw temper-tantrums like spoiled children, which is essentially what they are.
Thankfully, Revolutionary Road lets you know it's terrible before the title even comes up by having a fight between Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife April (Kate Winslet) that feels like a high-school production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The film then takes you back to when Frank and April first met and we get one of the all-time worst dialogue exchanges in cinema history:
Frank: I want to feel things. REALLY feel them. That's my ambition.
April: Frank Wheeler, I think you're the most interesting man I've ever met.
I know young people who fall in love can have vapid conversations, but there's "vapid" and then there's "Holy shit, may I please sterilize you?"
These two characters never talk to each other and they're not even talking at each other. They talk wholly in exposition, playing every emotion at the surface and shouting every line of introspective dialogue. It's like instead of adapting Revolutionary Road, screenwriter Justin Haythe adapted the cliffnotes of Revolutionary Road. This tin-ear dialogue makes it even harder to care about these pathetic suburbanites and their lack of imagination. For the entire first half of the film, April and Frank, in a fit of childish whimsy, decide to drop everything and live in Paris. But then Frank accidentally gets April pregnant and since they can't go live in Paris anymore, their lives are ruined. Nothing is worth living for. The second half of the film is more overwrought drama and shrill performances over whether April should get an abortion or if they should get divorced. I voted for Option C: drive off a cliff and end the movie.
I can hear some fan of this movie shouting, "You're criticizing the whole point! We're not supposed to like the Wheelers!" But we are. We're meant to pity them, not outright loathe them. And if we are meant to hate them, then director Sam Mendes didn't get the memo as he instructs cinematographer Roger Deakins to capture the beauty of every shot and composer Thomas Newman to slather the film in emotional music cues.
Revolutionary Road is a deceptive, smug, and contemptuous piece of "drama" that was thankfully overlooked when it came time to give out the big-boy accolades this awards season. There are only two truly outstanding aspects to this movie: 1) Michael Shannon's brief but entertaining performance as a mental patient who hates the Wheelers as much as we do; and 2) that the movie may have known subtlety at one point but it murdered it with a chainsaw.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
1.9.09