DHP Review: Revolutionary Road
Posted by Dirty Harry on Monday, January 5th, 2009
Revolutionary Road opens its story just after the conclusion of a disastrous community theatre production of The Petrified Forest where, on a small, suburban public school stage, April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) has suffered more than just humiliation, her self image as a unique individual with a special place in the world has been destroyed. Her husband, Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), obviously tired of April’s latest attempt at self-actualization, isn’t exactly sympathetic. The argument that follows is bitter, the film that follows is probably worse than that play.
What say we don’t argue over whether or not the suburbs, especially the suburbs of the 1950s, are killers of the human spirit. To each their own, right? But does anyone really want to defend that portraying the suburbs as such hasn’t become the most tiring of tiring cliches? Almost as tiring as the mentally unbalanced character with a unique, penetrating insight into the human condition … which Revolutionary Road also employs.Years ago, when April and Frank first met, they were not yet twenty-five, had their whole lives ahead of them and were positive they were special. She was studying to be an actress and he was a longshoreman dreaming of a life lived in Paris. Like all of us, things didn’t quite turn out as planned. For instance, I don’t drive a choo choo train and go home to a fur bikini holding Raquel Welch. The difference between by myself and the Wheelers, though, is that I grew up.
April resents Frank because instead of becoming the man who took her to Paris, he became the man who knocked her up, married her, and settled for a cubicle he loathes on the 15th floor of a big corporation. While he pushes papers, dictates memos, and seduces a pixie from the secretarial pool, she ties on an apron and quietly suffers the boredom smothering her under the sterile conformity of her suburban life and neighborhood.
At the end of her rope, April convinces Frank that with their savings and the equity in their home they can still live the dream. Sell everything, quit the job, pack up the two kids, and move to Paris. Her plan is to support him with a lucrative secretarial job she’s sure is low-hanging fruit while he uses the time to, uhm, well… And that’s part of the problem. When Frank met April he had no idea what he would do in Paris, and he still doesn’t. Frank has no artistic aspirations, but he does hate his job and so he agrees.
Obviously, the plan is doomed to unravel and while it does, so does the marriage. Frank comes to his senses after a nice promotion comes his way and the reality of the pointlessness of the move takes hold. April, on the other hand, is insane. She has no talent, no goals, no idea what she wants, just the certainty that she’s destined for something better than a cookie-cutter neighborhood and that she’s superior to her cookie-cutter neighbors.
The film’s biggest problem is that it is impossible to give even a hint of a damn about these two contemptible human beings. Young, healthy, employed… They live in a beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood and are blessed with two lovely, healthy children. Regardless of what director Sam Mendes might have had in mind, his characters aren’t suffocated by the American suburbs, they’re suffering under the realization that the world has declared its verdict that they are ordinary.
In equal parts, the film is at once the studied, somber, quiet autopsy of a marriage made in narcissism with slow, perfectly framed tracking shots set to Thomas Newman’s sparse score (more of that one finger piano plunking) in-between bursts of histrionics where both parties scream pretentious exposition at one another. Kate Winslet is awful. There isn’t a single real moment during any of it. The way she sits, how she carries herself, the way her eyes move — everything is considered and deliberate.
To be fair, DiCaprio has a few excellent moments, maybe the best of his career. As she backs him up wielding every psycho tool in the psycho wife’s handbook, he has a few memorably, powerful moments where his confusion and anguish is very real. Unfortunately, the overwrought dialogue sinks most of his performance, but the only believable moments of the film occur when he’s able to relate how it feels to be tortured by someone you love for leaving them behind as you learn to count your blessings.
Revolutionary Road is more of that contemporary Oscar-bait too sterile and self-important to deal with the real complications of humanity. Other than being a fly on the wall of neurotic melodrama, there’s nothing to take away from the story. Where’s the filmmaker’s courage to turn his source material into something meaningful? With American Beauty, a film I respect, Mendes made an impressive debut exploring the same theme of suburban suffering, but there was at least a real joy in Lester Burnham’s crisis of middle age and a final realization on his part, though it came too late, that appreciating what you have is much more rewarding than chasing what you don’t.
Revolutionary Road just lies there, a dead thing that like its main characters gives off a sense of entitlement about its own preciousness but without doing the heavy lifting required to earn it. Like April Wheeler, Mendes doesn’t care that his film has no worth. He’s saying, I look good, I’m me, I’m special, recognize. But the only thing special is believing anyone but wealthy, healthy narcissists will care about the trials and tribulations of wealthy, healthy narcissists.
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Jake Was Hereon 31 Dec 2008 at 4:56 pm 1The screenplay for American Beauty was, I believe, partially inspired by the original book of Revolutionary Road. Clearly, it was an improvement.
And I HATED American Beauty.
whiskeyon 31 Dec 2008 at 5:09 pm 2Thanks DH. For taking this bullet for us.
Keiraon 31 Dec 2008 at 5:49 pm 3I only saw the trailer (urped a little in my mouth) and could write the same review. This film had self-righteous “Better-than-the-burbs” written all over it.
But where does the director think most of the multiplexes are located?
Jonathanon 31 Dec 2008 at 6:02 pm 4Great review. Pretty much what I expected from the trailer.
There will be a sense of loss when I no longer get to read your thoughts under the visage and gun of Clint Eastwood.
Having said that, good luck to you on Big Hollywood. I’ll be reading and posting comments on that site daily, I’m sure.
Carolynon 31 Dec 2008 at 6:15 pm 5…the only thing special is believing anyone but wealthy, healthy narcissists will care about the trials and tribulations of wealthy, healthy narcissists.
Hollywood. It looks at its navel and sees art. The rest of us only see lint.
Fiftyfooton 31 Dec 2008 at 6:28 pm 6Kate Winslet was awful? I’ll have to see this B.S. for myself because despite poorly chosen material, I’ve never seen her awful.
Danielon 31 Dec 2008 at 6:35 pm 7Ever since American Beauty, all i need to see in a film’s credits is Sam Mendes name, and I’m certain I won’t go see it. I can’t think of anyone who hates hard working, middle class, tradition loving Americans more than Sam Mendes. Though, I am open to other nominations for that award.
the405on 31 Dec 2008 at 8:15 pm 8Daniel,
I would ask that you watch the “road to perdition” as that movie really is outstanding.
I agree Mendes hates middle america. After the failure of Jarhead he needs something to get back on the A-list…sadly this is not going to do it.
Keiraon 31 Dec 2008 at 8:23 pm 9“Auntie Mame” is the last movie I liked that took the position that suburbia was repressed, racist and suspect…But dang it, it still manages to be delightful.
Fare like this, though, just manages to be so over-wrought and condescending. I live in the burbs and other than occasionally wanting to wring the life from the neighbor kids (who are really, really annoying) I’m happy—but I suppose that doesn’t make good cinema.
Charles Delacroixon 31 Dec 2008 at 8:40 pm 10In the spirit of year-end penance, I have to say that I can remember in the late 60s and early 70s, in college (yep young I’m not) I can remember actually despising my parents for their petit bourgeois middle-American values, for their middle-American tastes, and for their Normalcy. I despised them for all this and more while of course they were paying my way through college and more.
They have passed away now. My mother only about a year and a half ago. My father was a WWII vet (Battle of the Bulge), my mother met him working in a USO, they got married, worked hard, lived & raised us in the (yes) 50’s and 60’s suburbs. Where they nurtured us on love of God, love of family, love of neighborhood, love of community, and love of back yard BBQ.
And looking back all I can say is how deeply, deeply, deeply grateful I am for those middle-American suburbanites. They weren’t perfect, but they deserve not our ridicule but our emulation and admiration.
In the great words of one of those middle-American newspaper comics back then, “nuff said.”
Bradoxon 31 Dec 2008 at 10:38 pm 11Like I said when I saw the trailer: Pretentious crap.
BTW, it’s almost 2 am, has Leo been tucked in yet?
Bennett Owenon 01 Jan 2009 at 3:23 am 12“Hollywood. It looks at its navel and sees art. The rest of us only see lint.”
God, that’s funny. Carolyn, please keep posting so I can shamelessly steal dialog from you!
Striker Zon 01 Jan 2009 at 3:43 am 13Keira - I think part of the reason that it works in ‘Auntie Mame’, besides the massive amount of goodwill the actors build up over the course, is the fact that it’s still the early days of ‘Suburbia’, so it’s not typical middle-classers yet, just wealthy, vain socialites.
Of course, R.R. here seems to take the position that anyone who doesn’t decide to jump onto the free spirit bandwagon is somehow a sellout. Sometimes you hear the sarcastic expression ‘I didn’t sell out, I bought in.’ Well, this seems to be summed up best with a less-sarcastic phrase that the director is incapable of realizing - ‘I didn’t sell out, I GREW UP.’
Ginaon 01 Jan 2009 at 5:52 am 14Sounds like the anti-”It’s a Wonderful Life.” Yuck. And I’m sorry, but Leo “I’m Forever 12 Years Old” DiCaprio does not a convincing baby boomer, or a convincing adult, make.
Frank T.J Mackeyon 01 Jan 2009 at 6:18 am 15Dirty Harry, I have a question to you about the movie.
****SPOILER****SPOILER****SPOILER***************
I heard that April Wheeler has an abortion in the movie. Does the movie portray her act as positive or negative? Thank you.
Dirty Harryon 01 Jan 2009 at 7:05 am 16SPOILER SPOLIER>>>>>
Frank, the abortion is the climax. Leo’s best moments are surrounding her desire to have an abortion and his disgust with the idea. She’s past 12 weeks, knows there’s no Paris, knows her life will never change, and induces her own abortion. This is all wince-inducingly done, btw. Just bad filmmaking.
You think/hope she’s going to off herself, but it’s just the baby.
The suburbs made her do it.
Doug Krentzlinon 01 Jan 2009 at 7:50 am 17I saw the trailer for “Revolutionary Road” last night when some friends and I saw “Gran Torino.” My friends are more liberal in their politics than I am, but even they said “Revolutionary Road” looks like pretentious crap. (On the other hand, they loved “Gran Torino.” Same here.)
oLD gUYon 01 Jan 2009 at 8:13 am 18Hurray!! Another movie whose central message is that I am worthless and The People Who Are Better Than Me loathe and despise me. I am so excited to give them my $10. I’m sure they will spend it on something life changing and enriching, or maybe just a little blow.
Jim Pon 01 Jan 2009 at 8:57 am 19Figures. And I really don’t care about Leo being a decent actor, I just can’t stand him. He symbolizes everything there is about the “wussification” of the American Leading Man.
Even though this is a terrible movie for sure, am I the only one that LOVED American Beauty?
Kevin J waldroupon 01 Jan 2009 at 10:58 am 20“Even though this is a terrible movie for sure, am I the only one that LOVED American Beauty?”
yes
Granton 01 Jan 2009 at 11:17 am 21The progressives have never forgiven the self-respecting, hardworking middle-class for abandoning the cities made unlivable by libtard “urban planning.” After all, how dare these ingrate little-people leave the Democratic Big City plantation? Section 8, moving the slums to the suburbs, is their revenge.
Dirty Harryon 01 Jan 2009 at 11:47 am 22I love American Beauty.
MovieBobon 01 Jan 2009 at 12:07 pm 23“The film’s biggest problem is that it is impossible to give even a hint of a damn about these two contemptible human beings. Young, healthy, employed… They live in a beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood and are blessed with two lovely, healthy children. Regardless of what director Sam Mendes might have had in mind, his characters aren’t suffocated by the American suburbs, they’re suffering under the realization that the world has declared its verdict that they are ordinary.”
Not for nothin’, but don’t I recall you also despising “Little Children” (correct me if I’m wrong) which was basically the “will you people PLEASE get the hell over yourselves!?” version of this movie?
Dylan Brunson 01 Jan 2009 at 12:25 pm 24Suburbs are a place to live, nothing more. How is apartment living any less horrible? The fact is, losers will be losers no matter where they live. What a boring concept. How would anyone think psycho wife’s make good drama?
babylon5fanon 01 Jan 2009 at 12:46 pm 25“Hollywood. It looks at its navel and sees art. The rest of us only see lint.”
I am so stealing that line! What a beauty!!
Murrayon 01 Jan 2009 at 1:26 pm 26This is my first post at this site, but I’ve enjoyed reading it for quite some time. I saw the previews for this film before seeing “Button”, and thought to myself that this theme is getting so tired.
But my main point in posting is to simply say how much I enjoy this site’s fresh approach to viewing film. I read the review of Rev Road by Ebert…..and I can’t even relate to what he wrote. It almost seems a parody of a review.
Kevinon 01 Jan 2009 at 1:47 pm 27You respect “American Beauty”? I walked out of the cinema when the ham-fisted propagandist wasn’t satisfied with simply making the neighbourhood traditionalist (Liberals read: “homo-hater”) unlikable, it had to sledge-hammer the point home by having him collect authentic Nazi memorabilia. (”Are you getting the connection, kids? It’s what Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen call ‘associative conditioning’, in their paint-by-numbers guide to making Liberal movies, ‘After the Ball’.”)
My friend, who stayed to the end. told me that this character later turns out to be - wait for it - “in denial”. And a murderer. That’s what you are if you vote for Proposition 8: a repressed, anti-social, Hitler-worshipping killer. Hand me that Oscar, baby!
PerfectTommyon 01 Jan 2009 at 3:55 pm 28DH, would this have made your 10 Worst List you had seen it earlier?
Charles Delacroixon 01 Jan 2009 at 6:52 pm 29American Beauty was really not anti-suburb or anti-Middle America at all. There were so many wonderful things there … wonderfully summarized at the end by sweeping gratitude for life, and not just any life, but plain ol’ life in Middle America. A beautiful, funny, moving, and ultimately affirming film rather than the reverse.
Danielon 01 Jan 2009 at 7:53 pm 30Lusting after your high school daughter’s friend, marriage, family & work are life killing oppressive forces and retired Marine with a Nazi fetish & in denial over his homosexual longings - Yup, nothing anti-middle America about that. Not at all. What was I thinking.
WasatchManon 01 Jan 2009 at 11:59 pm 31Hope this isn’t as bad as you describe, Harry. I think the novel is a genuinely great one. Not just “the suburbs are awful in the 1950’s” but a satirical yet compassionate look at human folly. One critic described the two lead characters as “two Madame Bovarys” whose refusal to grow up leads to their tragedy. A lot of movies based on great novels miss the tone of the book, and I suspect this is what happened here. Yates’ tone is chillingly ironic in a way that reminds me of Kubrick. And Yates’ joking, working title for “Revolutionary Road” was, according to his biographer, “The Bullsh*t Artist” (meaning Frank Wheeler, of course–thus placing the responsibility for his troubles squarely on Frank’s own shoulders.)
Jake Was Hereon 02 Jan 2009 at 2:42 am 32Wasatch: The danger of irony, especially when applied to such mod-lib sacred cows as anti-suburbanism, is that far too many people are likely to take it unironically. Yates’s book says, in a rather deadpan way, that the suburbs are just too damn nice. And there are a lot of people out there who really would see “nice” as a problem, the same kind of people who jump too easily to the conclusion that “nice” equates to “boring, monotonous and uninspiring” — distant relatives, no doubt, of those few who publicly deplored the renovation and gentrification of Times Square and 42nd Street.
Somehow, over the past few decades, the nice was made the enemy of the fulfilling.
PerfectTommyon 02 Jan 2009 at 4:02 am 33Yes, Mick LeSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle has named “Revolutionary Road” the best film of the year. Maybe not as good a year for Mick as 2003 when he named “In the Cut” with Meg Ryan naked as the best film of the year, but still, quite a choice.
Dirty Harryon 02 Jan 2009 at 7:41 am 34Daniel: I didn’t care for the end of American Beauty — with the gay marine and the shooting… It was a very lazy ending anyone could’ve written. Nihilism and irony require only the hands to lay it down.
But the rest of the movie is great. The moment when Lester Burnham opens that young girl’s dress, sees a child, and grows up is truly beautiful — as is the life-affirming montage at the end. Lester redeems himself and dies appreciating his family, looking at their photo. His journey made him appreciate what he had always had and that’s a great message.
Take out the lazy cliche about the gay Marine and you’ve got a damn near perfect film.
John Wrighton 02 Jan 2009 at 8:50 am 35The wife and I just bought a copy of ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE, a film we plan to watch and rewatch until the digits are worn off the digital disc.
This movie sounds like the mere opposite of Frank Capra, as if the fiends of the underworld concocted a dark looking glass where the diametric antithesis of a perfect movie was born: a perfectly bad movie.
Growltigeron 02 Jan 2009 at 9:12 am 36“Kate Winslet was awful? I’ll have to see this B.S. for myself because despite poorly chosen material, I’ve never seen her awful.”
Didn’t you see “Sense and Sensibility”? What about “Titanic”.
Randy Manon 04 Jan 2009 at 10:37 am 37As far as suburb-hating movies that are really 1950s-hating movies one that nobody here has mentioned is “Pleasantville”, a movie I enjoyed when it was new, but found irritatingly puerile and sophomoric when viewed again recently. I wonder if I would have a similarly changed reaction to “American Beauty”. The problem with all these movies is that they blame the suburbs for the people when it’s really the people that make the suburbs what they are, were, might be. Douglas Sirk was much savvier at this than most of his latter-day acolytes. I grew up in a world almost exactly like “Far From Heaven’ and “All That Heaven Allows” and wouldn’t have traded it for all the Greenwich Villages in the world. In Wichita Falls the real nightmare was a conked out air conditioner. I’ll take a pass on “Revolutionary Road”. And see if I can find the movie of John Cheever’s “The Swimmer”. Yes indeed, there was art to be found in the suburbs, but as always it tooks eyes to see it.
moviebobon 04 Jan 2009 at 1:38 pm 38Randy
“The problem with all these movies is that they blame the suburbs for the people when it’s really the people that make the suburbs what they are, were, might be.”
Surroundings effect a people about as much as people effect their surroundings. The societal system that needs to be at work in a suburb of the type seen in Revolutionary Road requires the subsuming of individuality and the self into a collective conformity in order to create a “bubble zone” of superficial stability and middling comfort. Since that’s not really the way human beings are naturally “wired” for the most part, and since some of us are better (if we so choose) at resisting it than others, you’re going to get some friction.
Cloudbusteron 05 Jan 2009 at 9:23 am 39“The societal system that needs to be at work in a suburb of the type seen in Revolutionary Road requires the subsuming of individuality and the self into a collective conformity in order to create a “bubble zone” of superficial stability and middling comfort.”
Could you be more pretentious?
The suburbs are filled with as many unique, interesting people living their lives on their own terms as any other place from penthouses to poorhouses. The idea that suburban life is uniquely stifling is precisely the Kool-Aid Hollywood has been peddling for the past few decades, and you’ve been drinking it.
MovieBobon 05 Jan 2009 at 2:48 pm 40Cloudburster
“Could you be more pretentious?”
Yes, but typing that whole thing into Babelfish, hitting “English-to-French,” then copy-pasting it back into here is a bit more work than I was looking to do at the moment.
“The suburbs are filled with as many unique, interesting people living their lives on their own terms as any other place from penthouses to poorhouses.”
Friend, I live there. No they ain’t
Like all other landmarks of the “mainstream” of society, ‘The Burbs’ are alternately openly or subtextually hostile to that which doesn’t “fit” to one degree or another. Just the way it is. If it WEREN’T, you wouldn’t see the creative industries so jam-packed with ‘different’ folks who fled them… and now take their revenge (such as it is) by eviscerating their tormentors in image, word and lyric. Generalization? Sure. And like all generalizations, it’s more true than the generaliz-ee in question wants to admit.
Though, even if they WERE, it’d be a moot point since I was speaking of (pretty plainly, I’d ad) “The societal system that needs to be at work in a suburb of the type seen in Revolutionary Road.” This specific place, of this specific type, time and place, in this specific movie. That’s the story of the book and the film it’s been adapted-into: Two people discovering that the place they’ve found themselves living is anathema to the type of people they are (or were, or thought they were - the question of which one it is is kind of the key to the drama) - one accepts it, the other cannot, both are devastated by the other’s choice.
Watch Reviewson 16 Aug 2009 at 7:44 pm 41Two big stars and one bad movie. Straight to DVD…LOL, should have anyway. DiCaprio rarely picks bad scripts, but this would fill the quota IMO.
Jennyon 18 Aug 2009 at 8:30 am 42Agreed on all points. The movie is AWFUL. Kate Winslet is one of the most overrated actresses of the last 25 years. I’m not even sure her husband is as enamored of her as a husband should be, if he would direct her as he did in a mess such as this film. Leo, on the other hand, is an underrated actor and has some truly shining moments in this perpetually and fatally pointless movie. I wish I had those two hours back.