Revolutionary Road – Sam Mendes

Revolutionary Road brings Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet together once more and they make you wonder why it took so long after Titanic to have them share the screen again. Nobody who’s seen Winslet in the likes of Iris or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and DiCaprio in, say, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape or The Aviator, needs to be told anything about the incredible talents of these two actors individually. Their candyfloss relationship in Titanic never really brought their magic to the fore...

John Lennon famously remarked, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”. In the case of Frank and April Wheeler, the protagonists of Revolutionary Road, it’s more like they make other plans to avoid life.

Frank’s and April’s relationship begins with the ‘eyes-meeting-across-a-crowded-room’ moment that seems to happen only in the movies. But their lives after are rooted all too deeply in the real world. The whirlwind romance that follows that first electric moment is never shown, but the sheer struggle of the later years of their marriage implies it all too clearly.

Of course, on the surface, the Wheelers are the perfect couple. He has a steady, well paying job he’s good at, she’s a nurturing mother and wife, they have the requisite two wonderful kids, and the postcard-perfect-house in the postcard-perfect neighbourhood. It’s all just pretty wallpaper over an ugly peeling wall. Underneath it, and within the two of them, a desperate sense of unfulfilment is brewing.

Director, Sam Mendes, is no stranger to the theme, of course. His American Beauty explored the lie of the suburbian-picket-fence existence as well. In fact, when wifey, Kate Winslet, brought him Richard Yates’ novel – on which the movie is based – she had to work hard to convince him he hadn’t told this story before.

He hadn’t. Not exactly. American Beauty was more about two people who’d simply grown tired of the compromises they were making for each other but Revolutionary Road explores something deeper. Frank and April never had the time to really find out who they were; they never developed as individuals before tying themselves to each other. He once had dreams of seeing the world, she of being a star of the stage. These dreams were just one aspect of themselves that neither of them bothered to really explore more than perfunctorily. Never mind giving up a part of themselves for each other, they never had the time to find all the parts of themselves in the first place. The upheaval of the ground beneath their relationship begins with these wide fault lines within each of them.

Frank knows he doesn’t want to continue in his job, but he has no idea what he wants to do. April isn’t happy playing house, but again, we get a sense that she doesn’t know what will make her happy. They try to fix things by deciding to chuck up the life neither of them wants and move to Paris. For a while, the plan works. They seem infused with a fresh purpose, a new joy. But then, Frank gets an unexpected promotion, April gets an unexpected pregnancy – two perfect excuses to cancel a plan they were only using as a band-aid on a wound far too deep to be healed with a little piece of plaster. These are, after all, two people who don’t know how to fix themselves; how are two broken pieces ever going to make a whole relationship?

Frank and April Wheeler may be the centrepieces, but there are other interesting broken characters living on the ironically named Revolutionary Road. There are the Wheelers’ neighbours and friends Shep and Milly Campbell. Shep is secretly in love with April, Milly probably knows, but has convinced herself otherwise. They go through the motions of their relationship, doing their own impersonation of a happy marriage. When the Wheelers’ first reveal their Paris plans, Shep and Milly declare their happiness for them. It’s a lie. But in the privacy of their bedroom, they tell an even bigger lie to themselves: that what the Wheelers are doing is silly and irresponsible. You know they’re actually wishing they had the guts to do something like that themselves.

Then, there’s Helen Givings, the real estate agent, who sold the Wheelers their house (played by an as-usual-superb Kathy Bates). On the surface a bubbly, fulfilled woman with not a care in the world, she reveals her family’s shame to April in a candid moment – a son just released from a mental institution. However, the son in question – John Givings (a stellar turn by Michael Shannon) – raises a question I have asked myself many times: are crazy people really crazy, or do they just see the things we don’t – or in this case, won’t? John ingenuously rips the masks off Frank, April and his parents, proving to be the only real revolutionary on this road where most people would rather just follow the easy path, than do the work it takes to carve one out for themselves.

Revolutionary Road brings Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet together once more and they make you wonder why it took so long after Titanic to have them share the screen again. Nobody who’s seen Winslet in the likes of Iris or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and DiCaprio in, say, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape or The Aviator, needs to be told anything about the incredible talents of these two actors individually. Their candyfloss relationship in Titanic never really brought their magic to the fore – even though the chemistry was undeniable. Here, however, they bring this dead relationship to life in a way you cannot imagine any other screen pair doing. Their performances are visceral, heartbreaking, emotionally charged and unflinchingly real. Even when they’re living their lie, they never once allow you to believe it. They cut out Frank and April’s guts and hearts and leave it all out there for you to see.

The gloss these people paint over their fading lives shines deceptively through Roger Deakins’ cinematography. Known for his realistic, moody and dramatic work in films like The Shawshank Redemption or No Country for Old Men, he does something quite different here in his interpretation of Revolutionary Road – the street and the movie. While Winslet and DiCaprio expose the lie, he perpetrates it with sunny hues, impossibly green grass and ridiculously blue skies, and cheerily painted houses that look more like a child’s make-believe dollhouse.

“All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie”, sings Bob Dylan in Things Have Changed. Well, in Revolutionary Road, all the lie in the world disintegrates into one big truth.

A glimpse of this multi award-winning film from Sam Mendes