Revolutionary Road Review

So I snuck over to my local movie theatre Thursday night after “The Office” and “30 Rock” to catch a showing of “Revolutionary Road” before it went away for good the next day. (The theatre decided it was a good idea to dedicate two screens to “The Uninvited”, but “Milk” and “Revolutionary Road” just had to go away.)

I’d heard “Road” was a solid, but depressing drama. So after seeing it, I was surprised by two things: 1.) I really thought my girlfriend Erica and I would be the only two people there because, honestly, who the hell goes out to see “Revolutionary Road” on a Thursday night? There was one other couple there and they ruined my continuing quest to one day see a movie in an empty theatre. 2.) The movie isn’t so much depressing as it is surprisingly intense. Except for ***SPOILER ALERT*** the ending — which IS hella depressing.*** END OF SPOILER ALERT***

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet star as Frank and April Wheeler a young, seemingly-golden couple living in the suburbs in mid 1950’s Connecticut. The project also marks the reunion of “Titanic” co-stars DiCaprio and Kathy Bates (who plays perky neighbor Helen), though my research uncovered the fact that Winslet was also in that previous movie.

Seriously though, DiCaprio and Winslet made the shrewd decision to not even try to make anything that could resemble “Titanic 2.” “Revolutionary Road,” based on the Richard Yates novel, is not an epic, feel-good, super-romantic love story — it’s a tough, often brutal drama that examines issues a lot of people (not just couples) have, but don’t always want to talk about because they’re so unpleasant. These issues include whether to accept or rail against conformity, and how something can be incredibly ugly and difficult while looking great on the outside. The fact that DiCaprio and Winslet look so great together (and ARE so great together) makes the casting even better.

I’ll flat out say it — Leonardo DiCaprio deserved an Oscar nomination for this movie. Since I don’t like to say someone got snubbed without suggesting which actual nominee I’d take out, I’ll just say that I’d happily replace Brad Pitt with DiCaprio in the Best Actor slot. It’s the natural choice because DiCaprio’s good looks work for him in this role just as well as Pitt’s looks work for “Benjamin Button.”

Frank LOOKS like he has everything — the beautiful wife, adoring kids, pretty house, decent-paying job — but DiCaprio does a great job of conveying the character’s frustration with his job (who can’t relate?) without ever having him come off whiny. Just by looking at DiCaprio we can see how he’s gotten all he has, so we can sympathize with the character’s fear about losing it all while still yearning for more.

Winslet, on the other hand, plays the unhappy stay-at-home housewife who is eager to escape the rut she’s stuck in. It could be very easy for the audience to look at the character of April and ask “what’s her problem” or “what more does she want”, but Winslet, in a brilliant performance, makes her misery, desperation and frustration palpable. (Almost unspoken, but definitely conveyed is how much harder it was for April to try and follow her dream as a woman in the 1950’s.) Winslet’s performance during the breakfast scene near the end is devastating.

At first, I thought I spotted some overacting during their various blowups, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were dealing with some big emotions and their performances were appropriate (though I’d certainly understand if somebody else wanted to say they were overacting).

If anyone’s to blame, I’d actually say it’s director (and Kate Winslet’s husband) Sam Mendes, who brings a nice eye to 1950’s detail to this movie, but almost none of the stylish flair he showed in “American Beauty”, “Road to Perdition” or even “Jarhead.” In fact, a few sequences are surprisingly static for such an interesting visual director. However, I DID like how Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe showed us a happy Frank and April meeting very briefly at the beginning, before quickly taking us to their current miserable state. It’s like, they were really happy and in-love in the beginning, but that period of time was over faster than they even realized it.

My favorite thing in the movie is scene-stealer (and Oscar nominee) Michael Shannon as Helen’s hyper-perceptive, but mentally-unstable son John. John swoops in for only a couple of scenes and is what would count as the movie’s comic relief. The joke (as was the case in “Michael Clayton” with Tom Wilkinson’s character) is that the only person who can see through bs and is not afraid to tell it like it is, is the crazy guy. The main difference is that Shannon brings a real element of danger, which makes his performance slightly less appealing, but a LOT more exciting.

And “exciting” is not a word I expected to use when describing “Revolutionary Road” based on what I’d read and heard. It’s a powerful, well-made film that especially comes alive when Shannon shows up and is worth seeing, if only because it deals with familiar to you or that couple you know who everyone thinks is perfect.

Revolutionary Road...A-