Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are together again. This time they are not on a boat and the ending is not known by everyone before they see the movie. There is, however, talk of a trans-Atlantic boat trip, sex in a car, and Kathy Bates.
Revolutionary Road, the latest movie by Sam Mendes, is a story of a couple in 1950s suburbia. Rather then depicting the Golden Age of the Utopian suburbs, Mendes shows us a kind of dystopia.
The movie opens with April (Winslet) and Frank (DiCaprio) falling in love across a crowded room. I know...not cliche at all. The next thing we know they are unhappily married with two kids. April was studying acting and is now in the occasional play when she is not trying to keep up the suburban dream. Frank had not decided what to do in life and now he is taking the train into the city in his gray suit (a la Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit) with all of the other husbands to go to a job that he can't stand. Neither of them like the situation they are currently in, but find it difficult to think of a solution to their oh so common but oh so never talked about problem. April finally decides that to fix their marriage and their lives they should sell everything, Frank should quit his job, and they should move to France. She could get a job with a government agency and Frank could just sit around and decide what he wanted to do in life. April convinces Frank of the plan and when they tell their friends it is clear that the plan is considered revolutionary by everyone else. April puts all that she has into making the plan work, while it is clear that Frank does not appreciate how others are looking at him when he says his wife is going to work and he is doing nothing.
The rest of the plot is spoiler material:
Frank discovers that April is pregnant when he finds a home abortion device in the cupboard. Frank is outrages and April just wants the plan to go ahead without anything to stop them. After some fighting it is decided that they will keep the baby and not go to Paris. April is crushed and Frank is still miserable. After one of their fights, April makes Frank a nice peaceful breakfast before he goes off to work. She is obviously pretending that everything is okay (this is the time that I start to really worry about what she is going to do) and she is pretending in a really eerily way. As Frank goes off to work, April phones where her children are staying to say that she is still feeling unwell but to tell her children that she loves them. She mechanically moves about the house as she boils water and sets up the stage for her abortion. She knows that she is too far along to do it safely and when she won't stop bleeding she phones for help. The movie ends with people talking about the couple and with Frank watching his children play at the park.
Special mention to Michael Shannon for playing the neighbour's crazy son. He provides most of the comic relief as well as being the only other person to understand Frank and April's plan.
The emotions of these characters practically oozed off of the screen. Both Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio were amazing in their roles. I also really enjoy when the title of a movie really means something. Not only is Revolutionary Road the name of the road where their house is, but they also tried to take a revolutionary road in their lives.
Most memorable line goes to April during one of her fights with Frank:
And you know what's so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they've lived without it. No one forgets the truth Frank, they just get better at lying.
Revolutionary Road gets three kernels - superb acting that turns an ordinary story into something extraordinary.
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