Revolutionary Road

Before I walked into the auditorium of this movie, I saw a friend who was also going to watch this movie. We were commiserating that perhaps watching a depressing movie while we were jointly depressed was not such a good idea. Then he said that maybe it would provide a sort of catharsis and it could cleanse the soul to cry. I think that is what I was hoping for all along. When I saw Rachel Getting Married, that is what happened. I felt terrible going in, cried a lot and felt better when the whole thing was over. I did not get my catharsis in The Wrestler, even though I had just watched it, so I was kind of hoping to get it from a movie about a very unhappy couple. That was my mind set going in. Iw as expecting sadness and I was expecting tears. I needed sadness and I needed tears. Perhaps that is too much pressure to put on a movie and to put on myself. I find that when you expect to cry, you can force the tears and that does no one good. Perhaps I was expecting too much? I had no idea what to expect, really.

Frank and April meet one night at a party. he is fresh from the war and spending time in France. She is studying to be an actress. The next moment, they have been married for 9 years and she was just in a miserable community play. Frank and April proceed to have a knock down drag out fight on the side of the road. The kind of fight movie couples have at the end of the movies, not at the beginning. It leaves them both rattled. The next day Frank cheats, while April tries to fix things. She remembers when they moved into the suburbs. She feels trapped. She believes Frank feels trapped. She knows what to do; she will move them and their two kids to France where she will work and he will find himself because he is miserable in his job. With that decided the couple finds happiness again. All the have to do is make it through the summer and then they will be gone. No one understands them. Everyone believes they are a perfect couple. When you live in the perfect house, have two kids and make good money, is that not the American Dream? Things are far from perfect and a few things keep Frank and Alice from moving. Alice gets pregnant, again and Frank gets a promotion and raise, and he thinks he is supposed to take it. He needs to provide for his family. he cannot have a child born in France. Their unhappiness spills over immensely. She cheats, he cheats again. He tells her he cheated and she asks him why he told her. He responds in some inane way and they explode yet again. With all of this going, everyone continues to think they are perfect, until they are not perfect anymore.

I did not find the catharsis I was seeking from Revolutionary Road because I did not find the tears. The movie is one of the relentlessly depressing movies like Requiem for a Dream, Leaving Las Vegas or The Fall. When it was over, I just sat in the auditorium trying to move, but feeling paralyzed by anger, by fear and by sadness. When I got to my car, I just sat there for 10 minutes wondering "why?" Why that movie? Why did those characters say those things and why did those characters do those things? What was the movie trying to say to me? Was I supposed to feel something other than rage for both of the characters? I could not figure it out? I felt like I was sitting in the front row of a play starring real life lovers as a couple who fight all of the time and at some point the characters are taken over by the actors and they are using the play to say the nastiest things to each other. I was uncomfortable the whole time. I could not sit still. I felt like I was gasping for air. I wanted the camera to move back. I wanted to get out of the house, but I couldn't because everything was just so damn interesting. I needed to know what was happening and why it was all happening. I have been sitting with this movie for about 18 hours now, and the questions still linger.

As far as the movie itself goes, everything is pretty flawless. Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet are combustible in every moment together and both are playing characters that are shallow, but they give them some kind of subtext. I was trying to read between the lines in every moment. They have an amazing chemistry on screen and they sure do look good together. Winslet was made for movies set in the 1950s. The way those outfits hug every perfect curve of hers, gives her character the outward appearance of perfection and Winslet does phenomenal work at making April far from perfect. The screenplay is brutal, but literary. The words roll of the tongue of the actors and it is smart, but it never strays from feeling realistic. There is strong supporting work from Kathy Bates as that Suburb neighbor woman and Michael Shannon shows up in two scenes as a man who has been trapped in a loony bin. He tears through his two scenes, putting to rest subtlety, in favor of blunt and loud honesty. His scenes pop and he is important to the story, but I am still not sure what I thought of him and what he really brought to the story.

Revolutionary Road is all about the show. We see pretty people in the perfect house, putting on the show of happiness, but it exposes an ugly truth. It is not a new ugly truth, but they do it very effectively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and when the whole thing is over you will wonder if something important just happened. There are two epilogue type things that I think could have been eliminated, but I understood the message behind them, I just feel emotionally it would have resonated more without them. I was emotionally detached from Frank and Alice, but was very involved with their lives. I wanted to cry for both of them, but could never figure out if they were worthy of my tears. Maybe that was not really my decision to make and perhaps I would have found my catharsis if I was not being so hyper-judgemental about Frank and Alice as a couple and as people. I guess I'll never know.

Final Grade: A-