Revolutionary Road: Suburban Unrest

“I feel like I've been in a coma for the past twenty years. And I'm just now waking up.”
-- Lester Burnham from American Beauty

“No, no, it's not the cheating. It's the hunger. The hunger for an alternative, and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness.”
--Sarah Pierce from Little Children

“Look at us; we’re just like everyone else. We bought into the same ridiculous illusion that you have to settle down and resign from life.”
-- April Wheeler from Revolutionary Road

The anxiety and disappointment of fading dreams linger throughout Sam Mendes’ suburban nightmare, Revolutionary Road. The fear of expiration dates on the Wheelers’ dreams cast gloom on their lives, especially Kate Winslet’s April. Sam Mendes has traveled down this road with his Oscar winning film, American Beauty. In some ways, one could argue that Revolutionary Road is a prequel to American Beauty. Sam Mendes covers similar themes in both films-- broken marriages, the suicidal blandness of the suburbs, lack of career fulfillment and the paralysis of conformity. Revolutionary Road wants desperately to feel like a great film, and at times it is very powerful, but by the end the audience is exhausted. The film is an unrelenting assault on the Fifties; one might think that Sam Mendes has declared war on the decade. He and the screenwriter, Justin Haythe, have done a pedestrian job of adapting Richard Yates’ 1961 novel. Bringing Revolutionary Road to the big screen must have been a very challenging task for Sam Mendes because is he living in the shadow of American Beauty. The film joins a number of great films that have covered the bleak and dark world of suburbia such as The Virgin Suicides, The House Of Sand And Fog, Snow Angels and especially Little Children. When it comes to disastrous marriages, all of these films owe a huge debt to Franks Perry’s 1970 film, Diary Of A Mad Housewife, Alan Parker’s 1982 film, Shoot The Moon, and Ang Lee’s 1997, The Ice Storm.

The performances are splendid, but the unrelenting bleakness is unbearable. I would have given the best Actress Oscar to Kate Winslet for the Madame Bovary Book Club scene in Todd Field’s 2006 masterpiece, Little Children. As Sarah Pierce, she was perfect and her character is so far gone and delusional that she thinks she is Madame Bovary. It is a commanding performance; perhaps, a lifetime milestone. Roles do not come along like that very often, but Winslet took it and created one of the most intense characters of the year. Any film which follows Little Children is going to suffer by comparison. April Wheeler is not that very different from Bovary or Sarah Pierce. They are all women who wanted more from life. Their desires lead to intense upheavals in their lives. It is as though she is in a prison of her own making. Her marriage to Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a great disappointment. Except for a joyous prologue when they first meet, this is a joyless marriage. Yet, this is not the only character that Kate Winslet has played this year that seems to be in a prison of her own making. Hanna Schmitz in The Reader is another character that is trapped by the choices she has made. To be very honest with you, I have very little empathy for either one regardless of the terrific performances by Kate Winslet. Winslet is on fire in both films even if the films cannot contain her fury. The more I think about it, she fares better in The Reader-- a challenging role in an equally challenging film.

What is very interesting about the analogy to Todd Field’s Little Children is that Todd Field had originally planned to follow up In The Bedroom with Revolutionary Road. Instead he chose to adapt Tom Perrotta’s novel, Little Children. Both films and the novels they are based on compliment each other greatly. I can see what attracted Field the Revolutionary Road in the first place. Tom Perrotta addresses similar suburban unrest in Little Children. Tom Perrotta and Richard Yates explored the emotional turmoil and desperate yearnings for something more substantial in the lives of bored suburbanites. What makes Revolutionary Road so interesting is that Yates wrote his book in 1961 and it took place in the 1950’s. Even at the dawn of suburbia, Yates was willing to take a stab at the emptiness of sprawl. Alan Ball would tackle this with his screenplay for American Beauty; he built on many of the themes in that film with his exceptional HBO series, Six Feet Under. While I am certainly a fan of American Beauty, I feel that Six Feet Under tackled the same themes, but with greater intensity and far more interesting characters. Television is the perfect medium for Alan Ball-- True Blood is growing on me. Alan Ball gets the suicidal blandness of suburbia. Even in his very uneven feature film directorial debut, Towelhead, he still knows this territory better than most. The artificial sprawl of suburbia can be seen in films as diverse as Edward Scissorhands, Pleasantville, E.T., Poltergeist, and even The 'Burbs. I am grateful that Todd Field chose to adapt to Little Children instead of Revolutionary Road. I like having Little Children as the meat between the two Sam Mendes films about suburbia. Todd Field’s film impressed us as did American Beauty. Revolutionary Road comes with so much advance hype that it cannot possibly live up to its advanced publicity. I am beginning to think that Little Children, like There Will Be Blood, is one of the great American films of the decade. For me, Little Children haunts Revolutionary Road in the same way that Anatole Litvak’s Night Of The Generals haunts Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie and in the same way that Whit Stillman’s Barcelona haunts Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Here is the thing-- Todd Field did it better with Little Children than Sam Mendes did it with American Beauty. Given what Todd Field was able to do with Tom Perrotta’s novel, I can only imagine what he could have done with Richard Yates novel. It is not that I think Sam Mendes is a bad director. He hit gold with American Beauty. I think The Road To Perdition is better than people give it credit for. Jarhead read better as a memoir than as a film, but the film has several great performances. Going back to the suburbs should have been a triumph for Sam Mendes, especially since he is finally directing his wife. I still think Todd Field, David Gordon Green or Paul Thomas Anderson could have made a truly epic film of suburban dystopian meltdown.

A delusional lifeline to a mythical Paris haunts Frank and April Wheeler throughout the film. When Frank and April first meet, Frank’s talk of Paris excites April. Paris becomes the extension of Joseph Campbell’s “follow your bliss.” This prologue cuts into the film’s present where a neighborhood theater production of The Petrified Forest does not go over well. It is a disaster to put it mildly, but the play and the reaction to the play sets the tone for the rest of the film as it does in the novel. April has the lead role as the waitress who dreams of escaping to France. The play’s failure to excite the audience is the powder keg that sets off a slow burning fire of mutual loathing and mutual contempt between Frank and April. The Wheelers think they do not belong in than their Connecticut suburban surroundings; they think they have it all over their neighbors-- Milly and Shep Campbell (Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour). The Wheelers are not the most likable people. The disastrous play opens up fissures in their marriage. Frank begins to take advantage of the trappings of the office secretarial pool. He has a brief affair with Zoe Kazan’s Maureen Grube. When Frank confesses to April that he had an affair, her response is not why, but why did he tell her. It is an interesting question. They do not have much sympathy for each other. April thinks she has found the answer to their problems. She, Frank and their two children should move to Paris. She insists that this will enable Frank to find out what “his exceptional merit” truly is. Frank can finally find himself. Frank can finally be the man that she always wanted Frank to be when they first met. April has delusions about Frank’s “exceptional merit” that even he does not believe in anymore. He is offered a promotion at work which would secure his future. His superiors think he is doing a great job. The promotion is not exactly what April wants. She sees something in Frank that not even Frank sees in himself. Moving to Paris would prove that they are special-- not suburban clones. The Wheelers have delusions of grandeur, especially April.

DiCaprio does a great job as Frank. I believe that his acting does get better, even if some of films leave something to be desired. As good as it is to see the Titanic lovers together again; I kept wondering how cool it would have been to see a young Tom Courtenay and a young Julie Christie playing Frank and April Wheeler. Or could you imagine Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor playing these roles. The insanity and intensity of the performances would have been overwhelming.

If Mark Strong stole Body Of Lies from Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, then Michael Shannon steals Revolutionary Road from Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Michael Shannon plays John Givings, the son of neighborhood realtor, Helen Givings, played by Kathy Bates. Michael Shannon is a minor, but essential character. Helen wants to introduce John to the Wheelers because she has bought into the notion that they are special and unlike any other couple she has ever met. John is a mental patient on his annual leave from the hospital. John is the film’s Greek Chorus as he is the only one who speaks the truth in the film. He sees through April and John immediately. At first he goes along with the couple’s battle against suburbia’s emptiness, but then he sees through their corrosive self-deception. John is no different from Wes Bentley’s Ricky Fitts in American Beauty and Jackie Earle Haley’s Ronnie J. McGorvey in Little Children. It is always the outsider, the misfit, or the criminal that is the most sane and rational person in these films. Michael Shannon is no exception in this case.

Timing is vital to a film’s release. Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino has the main character, Walt Kowalski, played by Clint Eastwood, be a retired Ford assembly plant worker. His prized possession is a 1972 Gran Torino fastback. This aspect of the film takes on an added poignancy as the automobile industry is struggling to survive in 2009. I am not sure how sympathetic one can be to the plight of the Wheelers in Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road. I am all for following your bliss in this life, but something does not ring true in the film for the time it was made. The idea of escaping to Paris may feel dated by today’s standards, but that is not the film’s weakest flaw. Frank Wheeler has a successful job. No, he has a job and right now that is a luxury many Americans do not have. I find it hard for many people in the America of 2009 to find any concern for the Wheelers’ plight. They believed their own hype. They became prisoners to their own self deceptions. The Wheelers had the American Dream, but it was not enough for them. The American dream has eroded for many Americans. I hope that the dream will be within reach for all of us one day very soon.