Review: Revolutionary Road
Filed under: Drama, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Dreamworks, Oscar Watch, Paramount Vantage
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It's hard to ignore the Oscar polish involved in Revolutionary Road; an Oscar-winning director, Sam Mendes, reunites the stars of the Oscar-gobbling Titanic. To that end, Mendes does his best to make the film look serious and prestigious. And if you give it a cursory glance it's possible to come away with the impression that it is indeed a great and important film. But in truth, it's both relentlessly grim and nearly pointless.
It's "nearly" pointless because the subject matter -- that the suburbs have mutated and destroyed the American spirit -- has already been covered, many, many times in far better films, ranging from scary (Blue Velvet) to romantic (Far from Heaven) to funny (Edward Scissorhands). In a way, those outside genre elements helped keep the material from becoming overbearing. For Revolutionary Road, Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe have adapted a novel by Richard Yates, which was groundbreaking for its time; Yates wrote it in 1961 when polite society just didn't discuss such things as infidelity, ennui, drugs and booze and insanity. But Mendes creates a period picture and thus fails to justify why the material is still relevant in 2008, especially when this stuff has by now become its own movie subgenre. (Click on "Suburban Dysfunction" at allmovie.com.) The main factor for Mendes is that it's an "important novel." Never mind why -- or when.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Frank Wheeler, who meets April (Kate Winslet) at a party. They flirt and it sounds like they're going to have some great adventures. Next thing anyone knows, they've got a nice house and a couple of daughters (the daughters are seen once or twice and then, for some annoying reason, disappear from the entire film). Frank finds a job in some firm having something to do with adding machines, and April does the laundry and makes coffee. Occasionally they meet the neighbors for lots and lots of booze (martinis in particular) and cigarettes. Occasionally one of them slips off with a neighbor or a co-worker for some quick, meaningless sex. (They have to numb their agonized souls, see...)
The twist here comes when April figures out that, if they sell all their stuff, they can afford to live in Europe for a year without working. Then Frank can figure out what he wants to do with his life. (The Cary Grant character in Holiday, from all the way back in 1938, had this same idea.) The very thought of this escape makes the couple happier and brings them closer together. But this happiness leads to two snags: April gets pregnant again and Frank gets a juicy promotion, making it much tougher for them to pack up and go.
But here comes the movie's weirdest element: Kathy Bates plays Helen Givings, their real estate agent, who insists on keeping in touch and dropping by with little gifts. She confesses to April that she has a grown son, John (Michael Shannon), who resides in an asylum. April says she'd like to meet him, and Helen seems relieved. John visits twice, once when Frank and April have decided to leave and again after they've ended up staying. Both times he can "see through" the situation, saying out loud all the things that have been left unsaid. It's a very precious gimmick, that only the "insane" guy can tell the truth in this repressed world. And just in case we don't get it, the movie spells it out for us later in dialogue. Besides that, it doesn't make any sense, since why -- in this repressed world -- would Helen ever admit to having an insane son? (Ironically, Shannon is the movie's only breath of fresh air, and he's getting some award buzz for his performance.)
Mendes keeps his tone very serious and very gray, with no humor whatsoever and lots of pauses in the awkward conversations. Normally, I like this kind of ebb and flow in films, but Mendes conducts the rhythm not as beats (up and down, with rest spaces in-between) but as dead spaces within the same dreary, constant tone. Roger Deakins provides the gray, flat cinematography, oddly juxtaposing the rich work he did in Doubt, which used weather and textures to enhance the story. Then we have the performances, which, in their seriousness, will probably earn a few awards. But DiCaprio seems too baby-faced for this grown-up era, and far too aware of his performance. Winslet now seems much older than him (she's a year younger), and their Titanic chemistry is all but gone (not that this movie was going to attract many Titanic fans anyway).
It's puzzling to consider that Mendes tackled very similar themes in American Beauty (1999), making tons of money and winning an Oscar. But American Beauty was at the very least smart and snarky and funny with a few genuinely lovely and/or sexy moments thrown in. When Lester Burnham drops out of society, it looks like fun. And yet, at the end of the movie, it clearly conveys the same ideas conveyed here (you can't drop out because society disapproves). Revolutionary Road fails to make the idea of dropping out either attractive or relevant. It fails to find any humor, tension or release in its situation. It fails to make this family and their friends feel plausible. The only thing it does really well is create a feeling of suffocation. Which leads to an idea: if you can't drop out of society, you can a least find happiness by dropping out of this movie.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-23-2008 @ 6:53AM
joe said...
thank you sir.
I actually think this is a bad film.
Pretentious. False. Mendes is a hack in my opinion.
Reply
1-31-2009 @ 4:53PM
julia said...
I totally agree. I was so disappointed in this film! We are very familiar with post war life styes of the 1950s and its implications upon gender and society. We are surely aware of this can be seen in aspects of our own lives today too? And yet I could not understand what was the point in making this film, i.e. was anything new being said? Was there a storyline with some substance apart from what I have sen before?
Fine art photography, literature and brilliant plays have explored the banal, the ordinary and sameness of life wonderfully well. Film is a great medium so why not use it well.
I thought the acting was poor, the script was pathetic and the direction of film was only a school boy journey, full of amateur imperfections. This could have been a film of depth and substance, but instead it was more to do with the ego of the director himself, full of cliches!
12-23-2008 @ 11:49AM
matthew said...
I wholeheartedly disagree with just about everything in this review. First of all, the film was very funny, at times - "no humor whatsoever" is not the case at all. I, too, thought it would be another run-of-the-mill "suburban wasteland" type of movie, which has been overdone, obviously. However, this movie was so much more than that. It was funny, sad, realistic, and very well-made. The Kathy Bates/Michael Shannon side story didn't feel weird at all. All of the performances were wonderful, especially Winslet and Shannon. In order for a film to be relevant, does it have to be set in present day? The level of human interaction in this film is relevant in any era. Also, they had a son and a daughter, not two daughters.
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12-23-2008 @ 12:42PM
Ben said...
Seriously? That's the best bad review you could deliver for this film? I know it's easy to feel like an authority on mid-century American social mores after watching every best picture made between 1950-1960, but you should hardly let that mislead you into thinking you can debunk Kathy Bates's character's performance. And to distill the story to a critique of suburbia is an oversimplification, almost as far-off as calling Edward Scissorhands a film about funny suburbia, and Blue Velvet a film about scary suburbia. Yes, the spaces may overlap, but it's in the reimagining where each film finds its strength. Revolutionary Road may feel like an echo when viewed from the surface, but it's one of the most timely films of the year. If suburban life is Mendes's "one note," it's one note that sounds pretty damn good.
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12-27-2008 @ 5:17PM
moustache said...
This movie was a sparse, talky bore; even Winslet could not save it. This is no American Beauty with its diverse cast of characters. This is an uneven plodding mess, and ultimately not even as entertaining as its trailer.
In terms of the story, the Shannon character is the only one painted in a color that isn't grey; even Winslet's April largely gives up on her dreams right from the start. Shannon's few minutes on screen offered the only welcome relief of a few chuckles in the audience to break the complete church service this movie was (commenter Matthew must also think church service is "very funny" -- ridiculous.)
There is so much silence in between angry banter, it made me long for the relief of a more fulfilling score. See Glass's sound work on "The Hours" instead, for a compelling counter. This movie is like being an uncomfortable houseguest for several months, tied to the ceiling of the kitchen.
I appreciate most of Mendes's other work, but Anderson was one of the few reviewers to see the emperor has no clothes in this one.
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1-02-2009 @ 12:04AM
Robin said...
I couldn't disagree more with this review. I can't believe that it got even put up with a fact like one of the kids is a boy totally incorrect. The children "disappear" when John Givings comes to visit, intentionally. The children are gone at the end of the movie and that is explained very clearly.
It's unfortunate that Mendes had to gloss over or entirely skip some great sub-plots from the novel, but it's a necessary evil, I guess. Yes, the suburbia theme has been covered over and over but not quite as well as Yates did in his novel.
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1-06-2009 @ 6:49AM
cinderella said...
hey i have a question, when is this shown in the Philippines? thank you.
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2-03-2009 @ 5:04PM
Eernen said...
Very impressing movie, I think...
As European, I'm sometimes amazed to read what some american people say about this: "boooriing" or "why to go to movies to see two person's lives destroyed..."
why do they expect every movie having happy ending? Maybe that's life sometimes: not fair.
i think this is emotionally very accurate and painfully sharp movie. It's not perfect, though: Some warmer tones in story would have made good effect to add wholeness to movie, to make it feel more life. And too much "Mendes-piano" for my taste in soundtrack.
Still, It's a tragic movie about tragic and timeless theme of existential pain and -for me- a warning and teaching film too. I think there are not many filmmakers who can deal with this theme more accurately than Mendes.
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2-18-2009 @ 6:30PM
nomi said...
I sat down in the cinema genuinely expecting to be bored out of my brains - Underworld wasn't on you see, and all that was left was Revolutionary Road and a couple of crappy farcical comedies. the only hope i harboured was the faith i held in Mendes talent.
I was pleasantly surprised, this film is beautiful. And i'm not sure we should focus on Suburbia being the main subject: more the desire one feels when their life becomes stagnent to make a drastic change. Here you can see a tie to Mendes earlier "American Beauty": someone who wants to transform their life. And Leonardo Dicaprio surprised me - I've never really seen him as nothing but an average actor, but my opinion of him has changed completely because of his role in this film.
Incredible.
As for it being described as boring is ridiculous. Yes it is a long movie, but so full of drama and emotional complexity. The only reason you would call it boring is because there is a distinct lack of explosions, zombies or car chases.
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