Film Review: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road
Directed by Sam Mendes
Released December 26, 2008

The buzz around “Revolutionary Road” is that it’s the first time Kate and Leo are back together after their true love blossomed on the doomed Titanic in the 1997 film. This time, their circumstances might be better, but their romance isn’t quite as easy. Adapted from the novel by Richard Yates, “Revolutionary Road” is the story of a 1950s couple who find that the perfect suburban life they’ve strived for isn’t quite as wonderful as they always thought. It’s a complex drama about these two unhappy characters putting on a pleasant front, but the problem is that it jumps in far too quickly. All the tension-laced arguments from the trailer occur early on in the film; there’s no period of bliss which actually captures that lost notion of the American dream. By omitting that portion of their lives, it seems as if Frank and April Wheeler may never have been happy. That doesn’t negate the drama of the film, but it diminishes the impact of their downward spiral. The film certainly contains powerful scenes, yet it feels off-balance due to the lurching introduction right into problems without even a flittering moment of happiness. Kate Winslet is an incredible actress who delivers a tremendous performance as the more ambitious and spirited of the duo, and it certainly ranks among her best roles. Leonardo DiCaprio continues to prove that he’s a talented actor and surprisingly decent master of accents and succeeds as the dissatisfied, hard-working husband, despite the fact that he still looks like he’s barely twenty years old. This is the fourth film from director Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” “Road to Perdition,” “Jarhead”), and like his previous efforts, it’s a serious drama infused with a surprising amount of humor. In this case, unlike with “American Beauty,” the humor doesn’t work quite as well and distracts from the serious troubles that the Wheeler family is struggling to overcome. The film’s last scene suggests a more precise thesis than the rest of the movie indicates, and it’s a shame that it couldn’t work as well as whole as some of its pieces do.

B