By Ron Wynn
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s celebrated reunion in Revolutionary Road, which opens Friday, proves to be that rare event that actually exceeds expectations.
First, the former Titanic stars are now accomplished actors, and both are outstanding in this film.
Second, they are working with great source material. Richard Yates’ acclaimed novel Revolutionary Road was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Justin Haythe has done a solid job of transferring the essence of Yates’ masterpiece about the numbing impact of suburban conformity and the toll unhappiness takes on Frank (DiCaprio) and April (Winslet) Wheeler, who seem the ideal couple to anyone looking from the outside. They’re photogenic, outwardly happy, and seemingly in Utopia while raising their two children in an upper class Connecticut suburb, complete with a big house on Revolutionary Road.
However, April is dying inside, feeling trapped at home, and constantly wondering how what was once a warm and mutually rewarding relationship became a dead-end, listless marriage.
Frank has his own emotional issues but refuses to entertain the possibility he should do something other than pursue wealth and ensure material stability for his family. He can’t understand why April won’t embrace their situation and at least pretend to be happy. Frank commutes to New York for his rather dreary but well-paid job at a large corporate firm. There his bosses speak in slogans and everyone scrambles to outdo and step over each other while steadily smiling.
Finally, April proposes a radical solution to their problem. When they were dating the couple often talked about going to Paris and starting over. She suggests to Frank that they do that now, forget everything else and make a clean break. Plus, the roles can now be reversed.
April, a former actress, will be the breadwinner, while Frank can be a stay-at-home husband. For a brief period, Frank entertains the idea, and even dismisses the taunts and disdain of his friends who question his sanity. But he ultimately can’t overcome the notion he’s supposed to act and behave in a certain way as a male in early 1960s America.
Though no one was using this type of language in the period when Yates penned the book, it’s clear his work was as much an indictment on sexual inequality as the corporate stifling of the individual. Frank and his cronies don’t consider their wives and girlfriends as anything other than secondary figures, and while Frank loves April, he just can’t bring himself to follow a plan she devised.
Also, despite their still sizable physical interaction, Frank is not exactly the most faithful soul either. But their troubles are apparent rather early in the film, and Frank’s office affair with Maureen (Zoe Kazan) isn’t nearly as much the reason for their problems as his refusal to see beyond fixed notions of masculinity and success.
Revolutionary Road has lengthy confrontational sections, and has no pat solutions or feel-good resolutions. Even if you’ve never heard of Yates or read the novel, it’s not hard to discern what’s coming as these two lurch forward in an increasingly toxic and ugly environment.
Still, despite the bleak scenario and gloomy presentation, Reservation Road shows once more that DiCaprio and Winslet are excellent actors and that the long wait for them to work together again was well worth it.
Source: The City Paper
del.icio.us
digg
Furl
Reddit
YahooMyWeb
blogmarks