A sinking marriage in 'Revolutionary Road'
By Phil Villarreal
Pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 01.15.2009
"Revolutionary Road" reunites three main actors from "Titanic," but the sinking ship this time is an idyllic 1950s marriage.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Kathy Bates are together onscreen more than a decade after their box office behemoth. Like "Titanic," the movie is one long, painful crash into an iceberg, sans all the romance. If Celine Dion did the theme song for this sucker, it would be called "My Heart Will Go Wrong."
In adapting the Richard Yates novel, director Sam Mendes gives DiCaprio and Winslet, and to a lesser degree Bates, plenty of room to act up a storm. Their characters, Frank and April Wheeler, tear into each other with the unabated ferociousness only longtime partners can muster.
Each is not only aware of the other's faults, they've declared themselves the foremost authorities on how the other person isn't the one they married.
Since the previous DiCaprio-Winslet pairing was so iconic, and the leads have aged so well that they're hardly distinguishable from the way they looked in 1997, it's tough to watch the film without thinking this marital graveyard is what might have become of Jack and Rose's infatuation had the ship floated on.
Reprising his trick in "American Beauty," Mendes deconstructs the American Dream with a portrait of two would-be free spirits trapped in a domestic prison of their own creation.
Frank, who muddles through a cubicle-drone career he despises, seeks solace in the arms of a young coworker (Zoe Kazan). April, who stays at home with their two kids, keeps a rigorously clean household and sinks into despair. Occasionally, she deludes herself with energetic flights of fancy in which she makes grand, life-altering plans, but mostly she seethes in contempt of everything and everyone around her, including her friend and admirer, a chatty real estate agent named Helen (Kathy Bates).
Frank is in a long slow death march of the soul, but April's fall from optimism happens early on, when she acts in a terrible play and Frank backhandedly compliments her, letting her know in no uncertain terms that he'll no longer support her efforts to become an actress.
"Revolutionary Road" trots out one juicy scene after another. The Wheelers' nonstop clashes pack the giddy allure of eavesdropping on your shouting neighbors. And every time Helen's mentally unstable son, John (Michael Shannon), stops by for a visit things really bubble over. John has a way of saying the exactly wrong thing at the least appropriate times, and his stinging, provocative truths nearly make you cup your mouth in shock.
As rich as the material is, "Revolutionary Road" sometimes seems a little stagey and stilted. Oddly, the kids hardly ever seem to be around, which is unfortunate because Mendes could have driven the destructive manner of the household home through less dialogue and more depictions of the impact on the younger Wheelers.
Then again, maybe it's best Mendes spared the kids from the toxicity. This cracked social mirror the director holds up to society is no pretty sight. Although it's impossible to turn away.
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