I finished “Revolutionary Road” last afternoon. I do recommend you watch it if you can get your hands on it. Not going very often to the theatres I’m not sure if it released in India or not. Maybe you can’t find it in DVD stores too, who knows?
Back to the movie, it’s another deconstruction of middle-income suburban America. It’s set in the 50s and shows how Leo and Kate’s marriage falls apart under the strain of unfulfilled dreams and impossible aspirations. How seemingly normal lives are full of angst and repressed rage just beneath the surface. It’s a nice attempt to look at failing marriages and lost ambitions, but I do feel it is an incomplete attempt. It does not dive into the depths of the conflict and the tensions but just skims the surface. We see the ultimately tragic results of all this turmoil and are even able to maybe predict them, but the reasons behind the unfolding of the same are not elucidated in so many words. You do see plenty of hints and the discerning viewer can piece it together though. Both the leads have put in a wonderful effort. It was perhaps fitting that this should be Kate and Leo’s second film after “Titanic”. How the dreams of youth unfold in to the drabness and banality of adult life and how difficult it is for some to adapt and give up on their desires is an ironic sequel to that tale of love transcending time. This film brings Rose deWitt Buttaker back to earth and she falls apart. And unlike “The War of the Roses” of the 80s and “American Beauty”, Kate ultimately lashes back at herself and inflicts perhaps a harder blow on Leo than what Douglas or Spacey had to undergo. Kate as always puts in a superlative performance as the depressed wife, seeing her dreams and fantasies fading away before her own eyes and unable to cope with the loss, with the idea that “they are someone special”, trying desperately to break free from the confines of the dull middle class life she finds herself in, chasing every rainbow no matter how faint and fleeting it be. How the brashness of youth fades in the face of the grim realities of life! And how utterly unable she is to accept such failure. Leonardo is very good as the frustrated confused husband oblivious of what goes on in his wife’s head, caught in a dead end job, afraid to chart a new course for himself for fear of failure. He sees his dreams fading too, but he resigns himself to the non-significance of his life, at least superficially for under the skin the failures still rankle.
Unfortunately the film suffers from one flaw. There is no prelude. We meet the Wheelers when their marriage is already falling apart. We only get glimpses of what they were before and nothing of how they end up this way. Maybe it was a deliberate attempt on the part of the director to make us each form his own conclusions, I don’t know. But it seems as if you’re watching Act II of the play. Apart from that, it’s a nicely made film and worth watching.