Movie Review – Revolutionary Road

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2008 – spoiler alerts Sam Mendes reunites three of the leading cast members from James Cameron’s Titanic for a very different movie, about an imploding marriage and shattered dreams in small town America in the mid-1950’s. Kathy Bates appears as a neighbour to the main players. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett are the living embodiment of the American Dream, but when her theatre stage career fails to take off, his work in computer sales starts doing well. Trouble is, he hates it, and feels empty despite his success. His wife suggests a radical even revolutionary change of direction. She proposes they move to Paris, where he can be a house husband while she gains high paid secretarial work. DiCaprio is reluctant to go, especially as his boss offers him a major promotion, but he does eventually discuss at least the potential decision to quit the job. Unfortunately, Winslett’s character gets pregnant, which risks ruining her dream. DiCaprio tells her of an affair he had (though she says nothing of her affair with a neighbour) and she tells him that she never loved him, before attempting to terminate her own pregnancy, dying in the attempt herself too. Beautifully acted but relentlessly miserable work. The neighbours and work colleagues all offer glib insincere support for the proposed move while clearly considering it a mad venture but also envying the couple for daring to go when they themselves could never dare. Only Michael Shannon, in a stunning way too short cameo, as John, a mathematician with his mind shredded through electro-convulsive therapy after a nervous breakdown, seems to genuinely appreciate and encourage the couple’s dream. However, on learning that they have chosen not to pursue it because of the pregnancy, he feels betrayed and accuses them of moral cowardice, with his words pushing Winslett to her final tragic decision. Intense, moving, uncomfortably real. This is everything Titanic was not and makes a few subtle digs at the Cameron epic. Winslett makes love in a car in a style very similar to that involving the Model T Ford in Titanic. The ship also appears in a fallen painting. Unusually Mendes filmed every scene in sequence, not moving to a new one until each as precisely captured. The photography and score really enhance the tragedy presented. Arthur Chappell