by Allan Fish
(USA 2008 119m) DVD1/2
Where we keep the euphemism
p Bobby Cohen, Larry Hart, Scott Rudin, Sam Mendes d Sam Mendes w Justine Haythe novel Richard Yates ph Roger Deakins ed Tariq Anwar m Thomas Newman art Kristi Zea cos Albert Wolsky
Leonardo DiCaprio (Frank Wheeler), Kate Winslet (April Wheeler), David Harbour (Shep Campbell), Kathryn Khan (Milly Campbell), Kathy Bates (Helen Givings), Richard Easton (Howard Givings), Michael Shannon (John Givings), Jay O.Sanders (Bart Pollock), Dylan Baker (Jack Ordway), Zoe Kazan (Maureen Grube),
So what does this film have to do with Who’s Afraid With Virginia Woolf?; aside from them both featuring warring marriages? Nothing. Yet that toss away line written by Edward Albee could not sum up Mendes’ film more accurately if it tried. Revolutionary Road refers to the street where the couple at the centre of the film, the Wheelers’, live, and yet as Juliet said, “what’s in a name?” Revolutionary Road is a euphemism – one used to describe a cul-de-sac or, as is perhaps more a propos in such a film, a roundabout which the couple are stuck on, the roundabout known in more succinct circles as conformity.
Take our couple; Frank Wheeler meets April in his twenties, sweeps her off her feet at an otherwise forgettable party, they marry, have two kids and move to suburbia. So far, so ordinary, but that’s just it. It’s sooooo ordinary, and both feel suffocation grasping them round the throat like a wrestler in an arm lock. The problem is that this isn’t the free sixties, but the stifling, repressed fifties, so everyone around them thinks they’re nuts when they decide to leave for Paris to start afresh.
This is Mendes returning to his familiar American Beauty territory, and the links go way beyond mere surface thematics. In the earlier film, all characters were sick of their life, of their own perceptions of failure and mediocrity. They set about changing them. What Mendes does here is show that things haven’t changed much in fifty years, it’s just that back then such ideas were not thought of as brave but lunacy. That which doesn’t conform and is thus alien, has to be the result of a delusional mind, right? In some ways then, it recalls the forbidden loves of the Douglas Sirk films of the fifties and, therefore, of Haynes’ Far from Heaven. Haynes, however, was merely reproducing the fifties in all its hypocritical, garden fence, asphyxiating glory. Mendes is probing deeper; note even the mise-en-scène, where those who loved his earlier Oscar winner will delight in his positioning of his characters, especially at the dinner table. In Beauty, it’s the kids who unknowingly show Lester Burnham the way out, whereas in Road it’s a man released from an asylum. Mendes is helped not only by the gorgeous period recreation, but by the peerless Roger Deakins’ immediate grasp of the seeming unspoken understanding he had with the late Conrad Hall. Just as in Beauty, the house, and indeed the colour scheme of the entire film, is patterned after white, as if to match the characters’ state of mind, walking around an asylum of their own making. There’s no red in the film at all, until the most fateful scene of all, but just as the eponymous roses had symbolic meaning in the sister film, so the blood here shows the life-force draining from one of the protagonists.
Amongst all the visual trappings, the cast have to be up to them, and suffice it to say all memories of that damned boat movie are forever banished. One expects great things of Winslet, and yet despite his recent, DiCaprio rises to, if not quite revolutionary heights, then at least revelatory heights. Nor can one overlook the contributions of Bates (in the Agnes Moorehead-type role), Shannon (superb), Baker, Sanders and Kazan. The real piece de resistance, however, among the supports, comes from Easton, whose fadeout with hearing aid turned down is quite sublime. To sum it up in a phrase, it may be a strange parallel, but this is a film that listens to Mark Renton’s soliloquy running down Princes Street; “choose life!” It’s a film for all those who didn’t have the balls – we’ve all been guilty, let’s face it – to get out quickly enough from jobs and/or relationships that stymied us. Here’s to escape from all our Revolutionary Roads.
Well, well. The war may just start with this post, Allan! 😀
The film didn’t work for me. But your detailing of the film’s color scheme is mighty impressive.
Cheers!
I mean, I liked the film, but wasn’t exactly floored by it…
This is a problematic film for me. One one hand its a stylistic chamber piece by a director I admire greatly (I have a funny feelng we’ll be seein my favorite by him further down the count). The adaptation from book to screen is well done and the tensions on display are perfectly realized. But, the casting of baby-faced Leonardo DeCaprio as Frank Wheeler is just about fatal. I like a lot of Leo’s prior work, but I just cannot take seeing what looks like a KID playing a mature, weathered, family man like Frank is just unbelieveable. I cannot take his presence in this film at all seriously and he is jarring to the rest of the fine cast. Ironically, Leo has matured since this film and he fit his Boston gum-shoe in Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND like a glove. I like REVOLUTIONARY ROAD for its visual style, sharp screenplay and willing cast. I just have to close my etes whenever Leo’s on screen. Unfortunately, that’s 80% of the movie. Pity. Had Brad Pitt or Sean Penn been available this would have been a classic already
Dennis – I have to say I completely disagree with you on this. DiCaprio (who was about 32 or 33 when he filmed this) was PERFECT in this role. It was the first time he was able to play a husband and a father, and by doing it in a period-piece in which people generally married at younger ages, his “youthful” appearance scathingly contradicted his battered and worn demeanor of a man twice his age and made this a fantastic piece of stunt casting (made doubly more clever considered he was acting against Winslet, who helped make him a teen idol so many years ago in TITANIC and who is at the height of her prowess here as his tortured and hate-filled wife). For me it worked on every conceivable level (and I have never been a huge DiCaprio fan outside of his Scorsese work). Pitt, though he might have been able to “look the part” would’ve be a huge distraction and has not the depth to pull off such a role. Penn, who looks like hell has already warmed over him (I have no idea how old he really is) would’ve been far too old for the part.
Mind you, I thought this film was no masterpiece and had some thematic issues and a bit of bad timing (as it did exist in the shadow of TV’s MAD MEN for many, as some have eloborated on further here). But the casting was one of the most brilliant aspects…and the performances all around from the leads and supporting players were magnificent.
Wow. Another shocker. The only thing I remember about this film is Michael Shannon and a powerful piece of acting by Leo when he comes home to a birthday party. Perhaps I’m being unfair to the film (I haven’t seen it since its theatrical release), but I remember feeling antsy throughout the film because of Mendes’ tendencies to lean so heavily on melodrama. Period melodrama can be good (look at something like Far From Heaven), but Mendes is a loooong way from that great film, and I still don’t think the man has made a complete picture. His films are too uneven…sure they always look nice, but he’s almost always bogged down by sitcom/soap opera tropes that plague his screenplays.
What is your opinion on ROAD TO PERDITION? I’ve only seen it once, so I need to revisit but I remember liking it more then any Mendes up to that point. Then I liked JARHEAD quite a lot as well.
Funny, Jamie – I too liked both of those much-maligned film (I really liked Jarhead at the time). I was quite skeptical of this, which I haven’t seen yet, and enjoyed American Beauty but found it very overrated.
This is one I’ve never seen; a few friends who have film opinions I respect really loathed it so I never got around to it. After this essay I will, and I also had no idea Deakins shot it. For me that makes it reason enough to watch.
I will agree, thiugh, that Leo has come a long way from his banking on his cutsie-pie adolecsence in TITANIC. His performance in THE AVIATOR was superb and I also felt he started showing maturity signs in BLOOD DIAMOND. I have no doybt this kid will finally reveal himself as a fine adult actor in the near future. Winslet is superb at every turn here and it was a real toss up over this turn or her work in THE READER for the Oscar nom. She gets better with every film she does. As for Mendes, he may not lay one in the outfield all the time but he’s never truly struck out. Only JARHEAD really seems shakey. ROAD TO PERDITION? Well, there’s the unsung masterpiece. Gotta funny feeling Allan thinks so too…..
JAMIE/TROY-I agree somewhat on Mendes not always getting 100% with his films. JARHEAD has great moments but the whole is never as great as its parts. AWAY WE GO is a one note joke that is replayed again and again and I see the “sitcom” melodramatics you refer to running rampant in that film, a real bomb if you ask me. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is fine, but I’m exasperated by the fatalistic casting of a baby in a mans role. Say what you want about AMERICAN BEAUTY, I happen to think its a brave film that reveals a raw nerve in mid-life humanity few have ever gotten. PERDITION, in my humble opinion, is a brilliant visual tone poem about despair, hero-worship and perception. PERDITION is Mendes best film and one of the kind I go back to again and again. That film floored Sam and I when it was released.
How can he be seen as a baby if you didn’t see him as such in The Aviator and Blood Diamond EARLIER. I agree re Titanic and everything up to the Aviator, but not after. Heck, he was 33 when it was shot.
Whoops! I meant to say KEVIN. Instead I said TROY. Wrong brother. You guys look more alike every day! LOL!
Happens all the time 😉
I think a certain maturity is needed to full appreciate this movie. I have no issue with its placement here.
Contrary to my expectations – I found American Beauty overwrought – Revolutionary Road impressed me. The acting is fine, the artistic direction excellent, the direction accomplished, and while the screenplay moves too slowly, it is substantive and lets the story unfold unhindered by weighty symbolism or rhetoric.
In our own lives, how well do we really know or understand ourselves let alone others? Ambiguity and ambivalence enrich this picture. The situation and the angst portrayed are very real and not confined to the 50s. What is of interest is the dynamic of reconciliation with life that we must all make. Each takes his or her own torturous route, and there is no winning or losing, only a path.
As Joni Mitchell sang:
“From win and lose and still somehow It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all”.
I don’t know, Tony. I’ve heard a LOT of people say that the film is an immature adaptation of the book – that it oversimplifies and loses the sharpness and complexity of the novel. I have not read the book nor seen the movie yet, so that’s just to relay what I’ve heard, but it would suggest that the problems people are having with the movie aren’t due to THEM being immature, so much as the film. “Ambiguity and ambivalence enrich this picture.” – in the criticism I’ve read, the film was taken as not ambiguous or ambivalent ENOUGH. Also, since Rev Road was written in the early 60s, and hence was not filtered through what you yourself have called the myth of the repressed 50s, but through a direct representation of its time, I’ve heard it said it relies less on received truths about the era, and that the film is too much of an artificial period piece.
This piece has further encouraged me to see the film, which I’ve been curious about from the get-go without catching it. I’m not sure if I should read the book first or if I should take the movie on its own first, and then read the book. Any suggestions from those who’ve done both?
I have little problem with this film. As Tony mentions the film is a bit slow, but the acting is powerful by DiCaprio, Winslett and Shannon.
I feel the film picked up well on the 1950’s repressive atmosphere and the frustration of future dreams that do not come true. How people compromise their lives and out of frustation blame each other. Idealistic dreams come crashing down when one settles and then reflects back on what might have been. I really liked this review Allan!
And yes, by the way, this was a strong piece. Like I said, encourages me to finally seek out film/book. (Though, God, I’ve seriously buried myself in about 25 books at present, and don’t need another, ha ha!)
You won’t regret seeking out Yates.
I have a real love/hate relationship with Mendes’ films. Just watched AMERICAN BEAUTY a little while ago and, for me, it hasn’t aged well at all but I really loved JARHEAD, despite cribbing FULL METAL JACKET at times, and thought it was Mendes best until I saw REVOLUTIONARY ROAD which blew me away. I’m not a huge DiCaprio fan but this role and his turn in THE AVIATOR, convinced me that he has the goods and is improving with every film he does. Can’t wait to see what he does in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming mindbender epic, INCEPTION.
As good as Leo is in REV. ROAD, the film belongs to Kate Winslet who really should have won the Oscar for this film and not THE READER. The arc of her character in this film and how Winslet conveys it is sublime. This film would make a good warm up for a MAD MEN marathon.
J.D. — Your MAD MEN comparison at the end ties in to why I didn’t find much in this film. While comparing serialized TV and films may be folly, I’ve found that MAD MEN is able to draw much more out of this time frame and the mindset that came with it than Mendes film even came close to.
For me, his film was a beautiful looking actor’s showcase (and really, Deakins can’t go wrong, can he?), where Leo and Kate try to out Oscar-reel each other with LOTS. OF. YELLING. But at the heart it felt empty.
But whatever, I just like that Allan is putting stuff like this in the 90’s to get all of us talking. It’s fun. Bring on TDK!
Interesting point about MAD MEN, because I feel that show’s depiction of the shifting mores in the early 60s never oversimplifies like “Revolution Road” — there are no forced dichotomies between conformity and freedom, only individuals who play society’s game and squeeze from it what they can while others flounder. I also feel that MAD MEN evokes this time period far more trenchantly, but that’s coming from someone who’s only read about it in books…
Troy, you bring up a good point about MAD MEN but naturally with a serialized TV show you are given more time to explore the characters and examine their motivations, etc. while Mendes had to condense it all into 2 hrs., which I felt he did quite well. As for DiCaprio and Winslet’s histrionics, I never felt it was showy but a brutal depiction of this couple’s disintegrating relationship that had finally reached a boiling point. Ah, to each their own…
JD — Instead of piling on Kate and Leo, both of whom I count as top-notch actors, especially over the last 10 years, I should point more at the characters and the dialogue they are saying, which I thought had all the subtlety of an anvil to the head.
That’s where my MAD MEN line of thinking was going (and it’s a comparison that I can’t help but make, seeing how the themes of the two pieces are connected), as it’s a show that rarely is so on-the-nose in that respect. Hell, January Jones isn’t even a good actress and her character had much more nuance in the pilot episode of MAD MEN than Winslet’s character does here.
Joel, sorry if I wasn’t clear. I meant ‘maturity’ not in a pejorative sense, but as being older and hopefully a little wiser. Most of us will not have had the courage or luck to find in our later years to have achieved the freedom we dreamed of in our younger days. We muddle through and one day wonder why life hasn’t started yet. If you are lucky, you realize that ‘not doing’ is the key – let life happen – the more you try and control it the less you actually live.
I doubt many of those reviewers you refer to know much about life or ‘losing’ at all: perhaps we need more critics who know more about living than about movies. Only by ‘losing’ do you find true freedom. Frank maybe has come close to this realization after April’s death, while April never really gave life a chance. This is ambivalence…
As Allan points out, the key to the story is the depressive John Givings – so well-played by Michael Shannon – who has seen through the banal facade of socially sanctioned ‘normality’, and has had the temerity to declare I am not crazy, you are. R D Laing nailed it during the period in books such as The Divided Self.
I don’t see making comparisons to Yates’ novel as relevant or necessary. A film stands alone as a cinematic work, and what is outside the frame is well ‘outside’.
Btw, I did try reading the book – after seeing the movie – but gave up after a dozen pages as I found the characters bloodless and unsympathetic…
Tony, I see the point you’re making, but there is still a pejorative edge to it which makes me uncomfortable (“I doubt [they] know much about life or ‘losing’ at all”). Why the bad faith? The criticism I read of the film seemed to sense Mendes’ approach was as bloodless and unsympathetic as you found the novel. It did not indicate to me at least that the critics were movie-hounds who had no contact with real life. And I think you need to let go to a certain extent of this chip on your shoulder about movie buffs. Heck, I spend a good portion of my life watching movies, I’ll admit it, I’m also young and relatively inexperienced – I respect that you’re much older than me and have more of life under your belt. But even I haven’t spent my entire existence sequested in a little nook excluding the outside world (there were years where I hardly watched any movies, btw, and will be years to come where I don’t either); and if that’s true of me, why not suspect it of a 40-something reviewer? Just because they didn’t like the film doesn’t mean that they are facile human beings with no life experience.
As for comparisons with books, I find them useful. Not to craft a first judgement – which, should to the extent possible, see the work as an isolated piece. But to go back and see where it went wrong or where it went right.
With that last statement in mind, perhaps I should see the movie first and then “re-visit” the book so that I can judge it a little more by itself.
Tony your two fantastic replies coupled with Allan’s essay here have made me see this film now. I will bump it up and perhaps return.
R D Laing reference did it; I read ‘The Politics of Experience’ about 6-8 months ago… it immediately earned you all the points you had lost for the Joni Mitchell lyrics. LOL, just kidding.
ALLAN-DeCaprio”s performances in THE AVIATOR and BLOOD DIAMOND work solely because they are LARGER THAN LIFE characters. The actor is going over the top. With his HOWARD HUGH’s he’s disguising himself under an accent, flamboyan physical gestures and, at times, make-up. Hugh’s was a real person and the actor loses himself in news-reel footage and film of Hughs, sort of as a blue-print, to pull the character off. Also, in the earlier moments of that Scorsese film, he is playing a kind of precocious kid. The same, to a certain defree, can be said of BLOOD DIAMOND. That character is an amalgom of sensibikities that a farther away from any person he as a human being is familiar with. These are broad, bigger than life people he’s playing. Its like a high-schooler playing Dracula or Don Quixote in a Senior class play. Frank Wheeler, regardless of the fictional anchoring is a very real, everyday older man. I feel Leo’s baby-face and youthful looks betray the performance he’s giving in the film.
And, to answer an EMAIL that SAM sent to me earlier: While I don’t think ALLAN is doing acrobatic cart-wheels, naked, to announce that he thinks ROAD TO PERDITION is a MASTERPIECE; the facts remain that PERDITION did not make (at least I didn’t see it) the NEARLIES and will probably place higher than REVOLUTIONARY ROAD on this final count. Masterpiece or not, the fact remains, Schmulee, that Allan probably admires it more than thie film reviewed above. As it should be, I’ve rewatched all of Mendes films more than once and, without looking like some erect pornstar, am pretty sure that when the smoke clears on these five films its ROAD TO PERDITION that holds up best. I know for a fact that you SAM like PERDITION better of all his films and, with REVOLUTIONARY banking in at No. 98, it would seem that ALLAN too holds it in high esteem. MASTERPIECE is a label few films ever aspire to. ROAD TO PERDITION is no masterpiece. Its just, probably, Mendes best and most satisfying film.
Dennis, Allan gives ROAD TO PERDITION 3 stars out of 5, and says it’s nowhere near his Top 100, nor his nearlies. Here is what he feels:
***, solid, with great photography and performances from Newman and Law, but fatally compromised by Hanks’ miscasting in the lead…
As far as what I think, I am 4/5, but I feel AMERICAN BEAUTY is Mendes’s film.
P.S.-SAM. Rather than EMAILING me your thoughts (knowing full well I cannot fire back from my Blackberry), could you please just tap them out here on the threads? The back-and-forth that erupts between us would better serve the blog-roll than be kepy as some private conversation. As seen in my comment above, the conversation could add to a discussion or, to a lesser extent, enrich an already on-going discussion. Who knows, perhaps this little tiff you and I are having over the merits of ROAD TO PERDITION being Mendes best film might spark off others here to comment and give opinion. As the MAN ABOUT NUMBERS you are, Schmulee, I’d have thought this kinda-idle-banter would be EXACTLY what you wanted here. I know you moniter the site during your lunch break at school, so tell me what you think. Part of my love for this site is watching a simple statement erupt into a no-holds-barred debate. See you at dinner!
I’ll say this– “Road to Perdition”‘s solid drama and tight action sequences makes me one of the few who thinks Mendes a great choice to direct the next Bond flick. If nothing else, it’ll help pull his head out of his ass from all the self-conscious A-list disasters he’s been involved with after his first two features.
I just saw this last night, and I agree it’s an interesting choice… though after the last choice it’s hard to not improve.
As a (fellow) Bond fan Bob who would be on your short list to direct a Bond film if the choice was yours?
I’ve always wanted a Bond film by N. Roeg. More then anyone, lets get Bond back to England. From there I always thought they should have taken Tarantino’s desire to do one a little more seriously… Fincher wanted to do one too right? Heck I’d even think about some of those great Asian guys that do action so well and throw Bond in the Orient. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN meets CRIMSON KIMONO.
I’d love to see Tom Tykwer do a Bond film. As far back as “Run Lola Run” he’s shown a terrific command of camerawork, scope and editing to convey frantic pacing alongside the film’s action. His last flick, “The International”, showed off nearly all the qualities necessary to serve a great Bond movie, and though he only featured one stand-out set-piece (the Guggenheim shoot-out, easily the best of the decade) I think he could come up with the prerequisite number of showy sequences for 007, though perhaps more focused than Foster was last time (I did like his movie, however).
So yeah– Tykwer all the way. Besides him, Michael Mann, perhaps? Another bit of “Miami Vice” style semi-serious fluff would do him some good. And since they’ve broadened their scope to Oscar winners, I can’t see Kathryn Bigelow as a bad choice– not only has she been a sure-fire B-movie master in the past, but it’d be interesting to see a woman’s take on the perennial chauvanistic dinosaur. Speaking of which, what’s Mary Harron doing these days? If she could humanize Patrick Bateman, imagine what she could do with Bond…
Tykwer is a great choice, a Bond film like THE INTERNATIONAL would be fine by me. Same goes for Bigelow, though I’d always go more for the artistic director and let an action director do the action sequences.
Didn’t Spielberg really want to do one way back when?
That’s the thing, though– there are plenty of artistic directors who are great, even enthusiastic, about directing action. The last thing you want is someone who knows drama, but doesn’t know how to stage action without significant help. Look at what happened when Irvin Kershner directed “Never Say Never Again” without EON Productions or Lucasfilm to fall back on. What makes Mendes (and I would hope the ones I listed) a great choice is that he can handle art and action with equal skill.
As for Spielberg– back in the day, yeah, he did want to do one. And back in the day I think he could’ve pulled it off. Now, I’m less sure.
And, allow me to be clear. I DON’T HATE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. Matter of fact I thought the film was one of the BEST of 2008 ( better than SLUMDOG, BENJAMIN BUTTON, FROST NIXON that were going for the big prize at the Oscars). Like Mendes AMERICAN BEAUTY and ROAD TO PERDITION, I feel this film is pretty much rolling with all cylinders spinning white hot. The period detail is dead on, the screenplay is smart-witty-observant-dramatic, the visual dichotomy (by Mendes and Deakins) serves the themes of the story brilliantly and metaphorically ( white being the most striking) and the acting (99% of it) is blistering. Kate Winslet is top of her game here and Micheal Shannon is wonderful as a man who can only blurt out the truth. My ONLY problem with this film is the casting of DeCaprio (who I generally like). I feel his youthful appearance is NOT in keeping with the time-worn routine that is wrecking the central relationship and feel his casting was a stunt to announce the TITANIC reteaming.
Like others, I am pretty shocked at the placement of this film. While everything is obviously subjective, I found the film very in your face. It has been over a year since I’ve seen it, but I remember thinking how the characters’ arguments just lacked a sense of subtlety… It seemed like every character’s emotion was just explicitly laid out for you by what they said, especially by John Givings. His lines during the dinner scene, knowing the exact state of Frank and April’s marriage, just seemed ridiculous. And I might be the only one who thought this, but I didn’t enjoy Michael Shannon’s performance. To me, he came off as an unintentional rip-off of Heath Ledger’s Joker. But I also thought Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance was heads above everyone else. Babyface aside, he handled the material the best in my opinion.
Heath Ledger’s Joker doesn’t impress me too much anymore, myself. He comes off as a rote blending of Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, not much more. If not for the grungy painted face and Glascow smile, it wouldn’t be quite the same.
OK, OK, I am mistaken in my prediction. I’ll put my tail between my legs on this one. My detective work and odds making didn’t pan out this time (as it DID with Allan’s Silent count). Although, I DID not find Hank’s turn in PERDITION even remotely as jarring as DeCaprio’s in REVOLUTIONARY. BOB-Absolutely! Mendes British sensibilities, eye for frame composition, expertise in action sequences and past relationship with Daniel Craig would all seem like real additions to the BOND series. To bring an A-List director like Mendes into it would be fulfilling a dream of Albert Broccoli’s life quest for Bond. He had Spielberg in mind for one after Steven’s one-two punch of JAWS/CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and I’ve always wondered what Bond would have been like with him at the directors chair. Your buddy Lucas spoiled all that by insisting Spielberg take RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. But, I’m really salivating over the Mendes prospect.
On Mendes in general, I have to echo Dennis’ observation concerning how his films have aged – ROAD TO PERDITION has aged incredibly well, in my opinion. I honestly wasn’t much of a fan after seeing it in theater and have grown to the point now where it’s likely to make my Top 20 for the decade. I’m not saying it’s his best or greatest film, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it would be the first Mendes that I would reach for to pop into the DVD player.
As for this piece, Allan, it is a great one… you churn a number of great essays, but this one in particular is outstanding. I actually responded favorably to this movie, which I wasn’t sure about going in. I see where Tony is coming from concerning needing “maturity” to truly appreciate this movie and don’t find that claim pejorative at all. I understand what he is saying and would probably agree with it to an extent. But there is a certain cautionary tale to be read for younger folks too – the kind of, “Oh God, don’t let my life unfold like this” type of reaction that can definitely drive something home.
Winslet, Leo and Shannon all shine here I think. The story is a bit too slow for its own good, but all in all it was one that I’m glad I gave a shot. Saying I “liked” it is hard to say considering content, but you get what I’m saying. It’s an 8/10 film for me, which is strong.
Dave, you’ll no doubt be amused to know that Allan saw REVOLUTIONARY ROAD during his first of two stays here in New Jersey on the big screen. When we arrived home, he went on the PC and wrote it up in 40 minutes, completely off the top of his head. It’s absolutely one of his most brilliantly-penned pieces.
All my pieces are done in 30-40 mins. Oh, and Sam, it was the SECOND trip…LOL
DISAGREE WITH BOB on the HEATH LEDGER/JOKER statement. Not only did Ledger finally depict the character as the unreasoinably hyper psychotic that even Jack Nicholson couldn’t nail down, but he probably gave in his turn the best performance by any male actor (whether supporting or lead) of 2008. As depicted in the comics (both Kane’s originals and Miller’s reinventions), the Joker has no rhyme or reason that makes sense to anyone other than himself. He’s played, righfully, by Ledger as a pure psychotic sociopath whose vision of introducing “chaos” into Gotham is just a mask for the utopian landscape he really wants to create with himself as chief archetect and, ultimately, ruling dictator. The Joker should never be played as subdued, as Nicholson (slightly too old and way too fat) did. As a fan of the comics (my obsession borders on religious), I know that Ledger nailed the clown to the ground with that turn. PENN, WINSLET, CRUZ all won Oscars for their work in 08 and Ledger was better than all of them.
Great piece, Allan. Glad to be in the decade I’m probably most familiar with…
I saw this film before Oscar season while still married. After the opening freeway-side altercation I groaned and thought “My god…this is poor, albeit exquisitely shot, dinner theatre”. The rest of the picture did little to assuage this initial reaction: It was Leo and Kate picking fights, scratching and clawing, hemming and hawing about what’s to be done, what can’t be done, how stifled and miserable suburban placidity is. The cruel irony is that after having undergone a connubial separation rife with acrimony, I’ve discovered how much genuine arguments can sound — can feel — like mawkish dinner theatre. There still stands the question of whether or not such tenuous authenticity works as drama, but I do feel slightly “closer” to this work than I did before. Like what I understand of the generation of the 50s, many disenchanted married couples in my social circle got hitched because they simply felt it was “expected” of them at that age and at that stage in their respective relationships.
That having been said, I’m not entirely sure the film works, for the same reason the book didn’t work for me when I read it in college (haven’t read it in a while, though, so I couldn’t pinpoint differences). Yates meant to challenge and puncture the conformity of one era with this narrative, but his portrait lacks incisiveness — we don’t really get a sense of Frank and April’s frustration aside from their ennui with the archetypes they’ve slipped into, a concept that folks who lived through this era seem more able to grasp. What precisely IS so stifling about an ordinary life? And how would some crackpot move to Paris change that? One gets the sense that the backdrop of conformity keeps Frank and April from discovering who they really are — their dreams and ticks and turn-ons — but this shallowness makes them more convincing as social symbols than as human characters.
I do like Yates and Mendes’ sly symbols of progress, however — the way that Frank finds solace in technology, and April finds her destiny in breaking corporeal rules.
Having you here is always a special treat Jon, and the comment here is just about as great as anyone could ever make.
You directly pose the questions that informed my second viewing of this film, a viewing that lessened REVOLUTIONARY ROAD substantially. I didn’t include the film on my ten-best list that year, in fact. There now seems a marked superficiality to the proceedings. Anyway here is what has me nodding my head:
“What precisely IS so stifling about an ordinary life? And how would some crackpot move to Paris change that? One gets the sense that the backdrop of conformity keeps Frank and April from discovering who they really are — their dreams and ticks and turn-ons — but this shallowness makes them more convincing as social symbols than as human characters.”
JON-but that’s the point. The symbols they are are directly connect with the status symbols theyt were striving for in the ultra-conservative 50’s. Look at a sitcom like I LOVE LUCY and the evidence is all over the place. In that, the stymied life, complete with white-picket fences, the latest kitchen appliances, television sets and car are supposed to subdue and stifle, make content a generation of people to keep production running. For a while, all is well and good. You love that girl you make your wife and she loves that man who took her. Dog in the backyard and three kids later they realize, as any thinking human should, that there is no vitality, no difference from one day to another. Lucy’s schemes were a direct result of not wanting to be lost in conformity. Here, April and Franks fighting results from a want to break from the same-ole-same-ole.
Thanks, Dennis, great comment. I like in particular your connection to “I Love Lucy” — though I always felt like the comedy of that show and “Dick Van Dyke” were more about attempts to conformity gone awry (even Lucy’s desire to be “in the show” followed a kind of 50s template). Ball and Reiner seemed to saying that a failure to conform was ok so long as your heart was in the right place.
It’s hard for me to venture into this kind of critique because I simply didn’t live through an era without choices, but I personally find something liberating in the “stifling” American dream, if lived sustainably. A wife, kids, a dog, a steady paycheck, neat technology, and opportunity — the routine is comforting to me. There’s only a numbing sameness to it if the individual living the lifestyle lacks vitality — the rest is just domestic motifs. There’s just as much conformity in the “freedom” of 60s motifs, where everyone was listening to the same hip music and reading the same hip novels and taking the same hip drugs. Frank Zappa was one of the first to point out that while the 60s claimed to free us from the backwards values of the 50s, it only replaced them with an equally oppressive and condescending set of rules (are you experienced?, etc).
In any case, these are all points argued from the perspective of an 80s child, so they can’t be made with any certainty or aggression, but from what I’ve read and heard it’s best to approach both the conservatism of the 50s and the liberalism of the 60s with intense skepticism.
This is a great exchange (and treads similar water to MM and I’s 60’s discussion from last night in the ACROSS THE UNIVERSE thread).
I’ve always felt what you are expressing here JON, conformity might not be for everyone (as expressed here in the wife, kids, house, etc), but to universally mock it seems just as strange. I mock it because deep down in my body I can feel it would be soul crushing to someone like me, but I see friends, parents, etc in similar predicaments happy as pigs in shit so I’ve realized for some it’s the bliss that they claim it to be.
Now a whole other tangent could be made that they’ve never thought out of the box or contemplated a life anywhere else, but to me this is the definition of a moot point.
Thanks, Jamie. Excellent points, all. Sorry I missed the “Across the Universe” thread — if all goes to plan I’ll be participating here a bit more again in the 00s countdown.
I think, too, that discussion and even depiction of these familiar lifestyles tends to favor analysis of the lifestyle over the individual — ie, we get sociology that critiques the trend without the psychology that might make the trend seem plausible and resonant. Everyone certainly does need to find a way to comfortably live their life that pleases them and them alone without causing harm to anyone else, but no two American dreams are the same. If you lack choices, that’s another issue (it’s only conformity if it’s against your true desires) but in today’s world it’s foolish to blame a cookie cutter life for your unhappiness. Why are you viewing yourself as a cookie in the first place?
I do, however, sympathize with what you mean by soul-crushing, as there are aspects of the modern “conformist” lifestyle and careerism I can’t stomach (ie, office jobs, etc). But luckily we live in an age where we can pick, choose, and personalize.
“Why are you viewing yourself as a cookie in the first place?”
Fantastic. I have nothing else to add.
So many that never lived through the period know so much about it?
Jon has brought a lot to the thread, but is it really true that “luckily we live in an age where we can pick, choose, and personalize”? Most don’t – even in the good ol’ USA.
There is a deep complexity in Revolutionary Road. Take each character into your mind for a while and think of him or her, and you find there are so many things you wonder about and why. One thing is why this couple never seems to consider their kids as having a seat at the conference table? April and Frank are young, perhaps too selfish or immature to understand the responsibilities of parenthood. April is clinically depressed – that is clear. Winslet’s portrayal is brilliant – first there is angst, a desperate half-baked plan for liberation, then frustration and anger, after a sense of betrayal, and then the sudden withdrawal into self-willed isolation, and finally self-immolation. Frank is still a kid – he doesn’t know what he wants. Dennis has it all wrong – de Caprio’s ‘youngness’ is perfect for the role. He is more realistic than April, but not yet equipped to handled the challenges of marriage.
I actually agree with many of your comments here, Tony, and have carefully disclaimered all of my era-izing with full disclosure of my youth. I’d also agree that most DON’T take advantage of the possibilities for uniqueness that are out there — but there are some of us at least that believe we can add a bit of color to the suburban way (this could simply be arrogance, though).
One last point — few of us lived through the “repressive” 50s, but let’s not forget that Mendes, Kate and Leo didn’t live through them either. They, too, are using conjecture, inference, and research, in this case to bring the source material to life. Of course there’s no way I can grasp the reality of what life was like at that point in time, but I can’t help but feel that some of the resonance of the social anxiety (which never fully convinced me in the novel) is lost in the intergeneration translation. I leave the final word on that, however, to those equipped to compare art to memory.
DAVID SHLEICHER-well, all I can say is that we’ll have to politely agree to disagree. Whule I can see some of your point, I felt that both Leo’s youthful appearance and his acting were wrong for the film. Winslet, on the other hand, has her game on. She’s aged slightly older than DeCaprio, physically, and her acting is just right. You can feel the deep frustration slowly coming to a boil under that mask of happiness. This is the same argument some have with Mendes casting of Tom Hanks in PERDITION. But, in that film, Hanks looked the part and his acting to its cue from there. I had no problems with Tom Hanks at all. Matter of fact I think its one of Tom’s most touching performances. Really couldn’t see anyone else playing Micheal Sullivan. I could, however think of several better suited for Frank Wheeler than Leonardo DeCaprio. IMO
I’ll chime in with the others and say nice to see you back, Jon.
I don’t want to offer any more speculations on a movie I haven’t seen, but as far as the other points go, conformity and the feeling of being “stifled” can come in many different shapes and sizes. I grew up in a small town, and never felt stifled or alienated until I lived in New York. The question is not so much your overall lifestyle, as how you stoke whatever it is that keeps you going. My loose understanding of the characters in the film is that they are essentially dreamers – or at least they think they are, or want to be – and this aspect of their existence is not fired by suburban life. Hence, it may be the wrong life for them if not for everyone.
Personally, as an outsider to suburbia I always found those types of neighborhoods really cool and exciting – the way they seemed to put down a sort of order upon disorder, without really being able to cover up the disorder completely (people and landscapes remain somewhat unruleable, so suburban planning really only adds to the yin/yang aspect in my view). I guess I’m glad I didn’t live in one, since so many people who did don’t like it, but I always liked visiting.
Re: the 50s, as Jon points out, it’s not only the film’s detractors who don’t know whereof they speak. As I said regarding the 60s in the Across the Universe thread, there’s a certain rich period – usually 20 years after an era has passed – when memory intersects with mythology to create an interesting dynamic, in which an epoch is re-conceived, somewhat self-servingly (Field of Dreams taking the hippie consciousness and applying it to the cozy nostalgia of post-Reagan American middle class sensibilities) but compelling nonetheless. This seems to have happened in the 70s with the 50s, the 80s with the 60s, the 90s with the 70, and the 00s with the 80s. Not that Happy Days represents a “true” picture of the 1950s but there’s a certain flavor of recognition in it, as if those who experienced the era are filtering it through what came since, without completely losing the juice.
After about 30 years has passed, the taste fades somewhat and efforts to re-capture tend to become some speculatory and distancing. IMO.
Thanks for the warm welcome MovieMan. Great points. I like your “20 years” theory as well, though I’m curious if it could be applied to earlier eras (ie films about prohibition crime made in the 40s and 50s). My suspicion is that our need for nostalgia intensified right after the late 60s-early 70s, maybe because we discovered that the pop culture of that time was too much of a bitch to better…t’would require more research to verify, of course.
This is another film that I appreciate, but wouldn’t crack my own Top 100. That said, I really appreciate Allan making his case in the main post and in the comments. That’s really why I come back to peruse these countdowns: for the unexpected surprises and Allan’s stirring advocacy for films that don’t often appear on others’ lists. Well, that and the vigorous discussion.
The film is flawed, but am I alone in regarding Revolutionary as Mendes’ finest film to date? Granted, I’m not sure its successes can be laid entirely as the director’s feet. It’s based on a masterpiece of mid-twentieth-century fiction (from which it lives vast swathes of riveting dialogue) and is marvelously photographed and acted. Still, it feels like Mendes has a real command of the picture that he doesn’t exhibit elsewhere. He knows exactly where he’s going with it, and yet he takes his time, offering us sequences of profound pain and beauty, often in the most unconventional places.
What the story loses in the translation to film is Frank’s revolting, terrifying, often morbidly amusing inner monologue. *That’s* what makes the novel truly great, in my opinion: that disquieting peek into the modern male psyche, so full of vanity, sanctimony, and loathing. Mendes’ chose not to use a voice-over narration of Frank’s thoughts, which I think is the right choice, but it necessarily means that the film just isn’t as intrinsically as compelling as the novel. Still, we get some wonderful compensation: Mendes’ and Deakins’ often stunning visuals and a couple of career-high performances for the leads. Why the hell did Winslet win for that mediocrity The Reader and not this? Her eerie calm when she declares, “Fuck who you like, Frank” just chills to the bone. And DiCaprio is just stunning here. I don’t know how anyone can watch him deliver a line like “You’re not worth the powder it would take to blow you up!” with such convincing malevolence and still regard him as the boy from “Gilbert Grape”. He has absolutely arrived, and he can join Edward Norton among the best performers of his generation.
I also really appreciate that Mendes and screenwriter Haythe made the film, if anything, more sympathetic to April (and thus slightly more feminist) than the book, especially given how woefully sexist American Beauty seems to me in hindsight.
John Givings sums up the film’s bleak spirit with one of its (and the novel’s) best lines: “Hopeless emptiness. Now you’ve said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”
Also: Best use of Nina Simone in a trailer ever.
This has been a much maligned and under-appreciated film and I think that people ought to reconsider just how thoughtful it really is. Also I was very impressed by Di Caprio in it, even though I was not convinced by his pairing with Winslet.
While I appreciate the point that Tony makes above about maturity, I think that anyone no longer an idealist carefree college student and who is capable of introspection is equipped to understand this film. In other words, it is hardly a small club of reviewers/critics who should be capable of properly assessing this work.
Finally, I always thought of the Wheelers less as two individuals in a marriage and more as representing some form of Taoist duality. In other words, they were more like an inner conflict within a person.
Longman, the interesting thing about the film is that it seems to divide viewers into different camps. Just about everyone seems to see the film as sympathizing with the couple’s despair, but seem see it do so more critically than others. Those who feel the movie is ambivalent about their ennui – who see them not just as dreamers stifled by an unfair conformism, but as people constrained by reality and their own flaws – seem to celebrate the film as an “adult” film. Those who think the movie offers, first and foremost, a condemnation of the society which “oppresses” the couple, tend to view the movie as serving in a simplistic, narcissistic complicity with its (perceived) arrogant protagonists – in other words of endorsing the very “idealist carefree college student” perspective you and the other admirers of the film think it transcends. In other words, both the critics and celebrants of the film – at least the vast majority of the ones I’ve encountered – seem to generally agree on an essential point: that a simplistic condemnation of “society” or “culture” as the culprit for the couple’s happiness is wrongheaded, and that such a view entails a certain immaturity. Where they seem to disagree is on whether or not the film endorses this view, or takes a more subtle analysis.
So I don’t think, ultimately, it’s a question of the viewer’s maturity but rather a question of the film’s – which seems to be in dispute. I look forward to discovering my own take on the subject.
MM, thanks for the response, but a lot of what you say is to put words in my mouth via glib generalisations of how people perceive the film. For example, I would never have used “adult” or “mature” to describe this film if others had not used them above. It seems a superficial way of engaging with the work. I would rather go at it in a deeper way.
Not to offend you with those remarks. Rather to say that I will react with interest to your considered thoughts on the film in due course. It feels too lop-sided a discussion to engage in right now.
Longman, I’m a little confused about what you think I’m saying. My very point was to dismantle a “lopsided” perspective and to try and get a sense of where both sides are coming from in this debate. What about my characterization did you feel was over-generalizing?
The specific words are kind of beside the point: when you used “thoughtful” it was to the same effect as “adult” or “mature” (as is your statement that you “would rather go at it in a deeper way”). In other words, you seem to be saying that the movie offers a well-considered, nuanced portrait of its protagonists’ ennui, instead of simply indulging it or playing it as a string of cliches. I don’t think that’s a glib generalization of your position, but rather a succinct summation.
MM, to argue against the consensus line in a debate is always a lop-sided affair as the consensus seeks only common ground, has no interest in outlier opinions, and is only willing to change its position by inches at a time. So where is the fun in that? This is why I would rather know your opinion having seen the film!
I am not sure why the “maturity” of the film has become such an issue on this thread. Admittedly, a lot of people watched it at the time expecting something a lot less dour and never really gave the actual message from the film proper consideration so. At the same time, the film was hardly opaque in nature or required any form of special life experience to relate to. So why get bogged down on such an elementary point?
Longman, the sort of consensus I was seeking was not a consensus of conclusion but a consensus of foundation – an attempt to reconcile where the various points of view were coming from, the common ground they were haggling over. Without such an attempt, no debate is possible. With it, debate can proceed.
I did not bring “maturity” into the debate, Tony did – in a way that sounded to me like a slighting of those who disagreed with him about the film’s merits (though he demurred on this point, he later wrote “I doubt many of those reviewers you refer to know much about life or ‘losing’ at all: perhaps we need more critics who know more about living than about movies.”) This would seem to confirm my impression that he was shifting the blame for the movie’s “failure” from the movie onto its critics, and in a way which slighted them not only professionally (i.e. they didn’t “get” what the movie was doing aesthetically) but personally (given that they don’t “know more about living than about movies”, they are insufficiently “mature” to appreciate the movie). I thought this was too harsh and was not really grappling with criticism of the film.
My later point, which you seem to have objected to, was an attempt to point out that both those praising and criticizing the film were actually approaching it on similar grounds. They had fundamentally similar aims – seeking a complex work which dealt with a situation like the Wheeler’s with subtlety (not the same thing as being opaque, btw).
My comment was intended mostly as a synthesis of what I already read, and not so much a direct response to your point. Sorry for the conclusion that may have arisen from my comment placement.
Incidentally, I should be watching Revolutionary Road later this week. I plan on returning to this board to share my impressions afterwards…