Movie Review Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road (2008) 

Directed by Sam Mendes 

Written by Justin Haythe 

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon

Release Date December 26th, 2008

Published December 25th, 2008 

I am beginning to wonder if director Sam Mendes is really just M. Night Shyamalan with neuroses. The career correlatives are compelling. They broke out together in 1999 with a pair of at least slightly overrated Oscar nominees, American Beauty and The Sixth Sense, and have ever since delivered diminishing returns.

Both directors are self consciously arty and humorless about their work. However, Mendes has yet to deliver something as career devastatingly bad as The Happening. Unlike Shyamalan's latest, Mendes' Revolutionary Road is merely bad, not a trainwreck.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, our Titanic dream couple, are all growed up and sad as suburbanites Frank and April Wheeler. I call them suburbanites but Frank and April would chafe at such a label. No, despite the manicured lawn, lacquered grinning neighbors, and 2.0 kids, Frank and April are above the title suburbanite.

Or so they believe. One day, when April takes out the garbage and see's rows and rows of the exact same garbage cans on her street, she realizes that she is no different than the average, white wine in the afternoon suburban mommy. This desperate revelation inspires a wild idea for Frank's upcoming 30th birthday.

April wants to move to Paris. There, she will work and Frank can pursue himself, find whatever it is that he is. Too bad for April that Frank has given up their petty dreams and found himself a comfortable rut selling whatever a Knox 500 is. Though he initially goes along with April's wacky scheme, we know he is just playing the part of supportive husband.

We know from the beginning of Frank and April's blissful 'we're moving to Paris' phase that the rug will be pulled out from under them, the question becomes how. The answer is dramatic but also slightly inert. If you can't see where this is all heading, you're really not trying.

It's not that Revolutionary Road is devastatingly predictable. Rather, it is the way in which it is predictable. The choices that unfold and the way they unfold feel duly preconceived though we sense they are supposed to be tragic or moving. Each scene is pushily meant to symbolize Frank and April's alienation but each lingers on the point far past necessity.

Revolutionary Road is one of those films that feigns depth by dramatically being all things to all viewers. If you want to read anti-feminism or even misogyny into the work, you can. If you want to read the same suburban misanthropy of Mendes's American Beauty in Revolutionary Road, you can.

You can take individual scenes and characters and spin them off in wild, fictive fantasies of meaning and depth and the film can match whatever emotionally resonant thing you seek. For me, it all seemed an aimless mélange of sadness that relies heavily on stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Oscar nominee Michael Shannon to give it any meaning whatsoever.

That each of these talented actors come close to delivering through the murk of Revolutionary Road is quite a feat. Winslet especially is swimming upstream as this irrational flibbertigibbet who could set the women's movement back 20 or 30 years with the power of her suburban angst.

DiCaprio is the most comfortable in his role. With his baby fat pudge evading his man-boy status without him having to say a word, DiCaprio settles in to delve deeply into Frank's fears and desires and nearly makes it all work. If only what was surrounding him weren't so aimless.

Finally there is Michael Shannon who earns every inch of his Oscar nomination. You can debate the necessity of his character. You can fairly question his role as that of a creative device employed to craft tension but you cannot deny his intensity and resonant power. In just three scenes, Shannon devastates and exits in unforgettable fashion.

Give Sam Mendes this, like his counterpart Mr. Shyamalan, his failures are memorable. Revolutionary Road unquestionably fails but it does so in ways that you will remember and discuss long after the film is over.