The icy waters of the Atlantic kept them from a happy ending in Titanic. In Revolutionary Road the small disappointments of daily life threaten to curdle and destroy what seems to the outside world like a perfect marriage.
Revolutionary Road is the long-awaited film version of the Richard Yates novel of the same name. The author spent his life chronicling the shattered lives and broken hopes of people disappointed by the American Dream. He was one of the great American writers of the 20th century. His view of the world was so bleak and uncompromising that it is not entirely surprising that he died in relative obscurity in 1982. Revolutionary Road has long been considered one of his finest achievements and the film version does justice to the story, even if it feels a little too reverential for its own good.
In the Connecticut of the Fifties Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) and his wife April (Winslet) appear to be living the American Dream. He has a peachy job in the marketing department of a big Manhattan company. They have a dream home, two children and want for nothing.
They should be the happiest people in the world but their life together is not enough, especially not for April. She always thought they would be different, making something unforgettable from their lives.
Now she feels trapped in someone else’s dream. She senses that Frank feels the same way and suggests that they leave everything behind and go to live in Paris. April would work and support the family and he could discover himself and what he really wanted to do with his life – paint, write the great novel, do something, anything more creative than heading to the office every day. It is a wonderful fantasy but you know in your bones it will never come to pass.
Revolutionary Road is a perceptive tale of a relationship in meltdown as two people start to unravel the ties that bind them together and end up wondering what they ever had in common in the first place.
Winslet has played the role of the desperate housewife before but captures the steel of a woman longing for a life less ordinary than the one she has.
When April realises that she has grown to despise the man she once loved, Winslet makes it seem as if this revelation is as fresh and unsettling to April as it is to the audience.
DiCaprio is the revelation in Revolutionary Road. He captures a real sense of a man facing up to his limitations and unimpressed by what he finds. There is a self-loathing brewing in him because he knows he will never be more than ordinary and April is a cruel reminder that someone once thought he might be special.
Rethinking about the movie and connecting how our lives go on living for the dream or bypassing the dreams and living on.
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