Revolutionary Road

By Ray DeRousse / July 1, 2011

You know how the story goes: a young boy meets a young girl, both of them full of vivid dreams and aspirations, who then trade them in for an ordinary life like any other. Before long, repressed hope becomes a boiling anger that eventually leads to collapse. In a society like ours, which almost parasitically depends on conformity and compromise, we have seen more dreams squandered and more marriages torn asunder in increasingly greater numbers. Such a story forms the backbone of the powerfully-acted and ultimately cliched and empty domestic drama REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. The films reunites TITANIC stars LEONARDO DICAPRIO and KATE WINSLET as Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple who meet one night at a party. Almost instantly, they are married and burdened/blessed with two small children. They buy a beautiful two-story house that sits squarely in the middle of a Middle American suburb at the end of the titular road. Frank has a mind-numbing, poorly-defined job in an advertising firm while April, once a budding actress, plays domestic housewife while stifling her aspirations. Soon, the weight of giving in to the machinery results in aborted plans, infidelities, rage, and, ultimately, catastrophe. The film, adapted from the much-loved novel by Richard Yates, provides a tremendous showcase for two of our better young actors, and they do not disappoint. DiCaprio perfectly captures the inner doubts that drive Frank to mediocrity, while Winslet restrains her April from some of the melodramatic elements of her character. The story arc pits the two actors against each other in a series increasingly frustrated and wearying fits of rage and despair, and they rise to the challenge spectacularly; in one fight near the end of the film, DiCaprio unleashes a desperate and naked amount of emotion that might be one of his finest moments on film. Director SAM MENDES composes his shots artfully, and the restrained atmosphere is appropriately suffocating. Our greatest living cinematographer, ROGER DEAKINS, amazingly lights and photographs the film like a soft catalogue of fifties decor and style. The musical score by THOMAS NEWMAN is terribly repetitive, endlessly repeating the same three and four note chord progression; it's like orchestral Chinese water torture. While these elements are skillfully crafted and serve their purpose in the telling of this story, they also tend to be cold, emotionally holding the audience away from the drama. This is disastrous for a film that desperately wants to pull us into the emotional subtext of the DiCaprio and (especially) Winslet characters. The film ultimately fails because of the script and storyline crafted by Yates and screenwriter JUSTIN HAYTHE, which is loaded to the brim with cliched contrivances and soap-opera histrionics. There hasn't been an Oscar contender this ridiculously over-the-top since TERMS OF ENDEARMENT. Again and again, the film leaps from one prurient and gossipy event to another; the story may have been written by transcribing the conversations of old sewing circle housewives ... Will his wife find out about the affair? And what about HER affair?? Will she keep the baby, or have an abortion? And HOW will she do it??? You can almost hear them whispering to each other and then gasping as they relate the tale. While the film is well-made, and definitely has something to say about the male ego and the soul-deadening effect of conformity, its ridiculously cliched and restrained atmosphere ultimately makes REVOLUTIONARY ROAD a path unpleasant to tread.