Revolutionary Road Movie Review
Let’s address the Titanic comparisons first. Yes, Leonardo and Kate are again the love interest, this time as Frank and April Wheeler. You’ll have to imagine all but a scene or two or their falling in love - before you’ve finished the popcorn, they are 1950’s suburbanites with two kids. And yes, there are other spoiler comparisons that don’t need to be spelled out here. But how about this one: Kathy Bates also plays a significant role in each. She was something of a maverick in Titanic as the wealthy socialite who lent Jack a tux for the ball, but here her character is a very conventional – a crushing force of oppressive conformity.
The movie’s best moment is when April talks Frank into checking out of the stultifying conformity of their suburban life and moving to Paris to figure out how to be more alive. They have tried to “find life” in Connecticut but can’t. He knew Paris from the war, and has spoken longingly of how alive he felt there. The scenes that follow create a hopeful and optimistic mood once again – the characters’ intimacy, the sense of childlike delight they display as if sharing the same hilarious inside joke, completely takes over the movie.
But that mood does not last.
Besides the knock-down drag out fights between the main characters, the movie’s most telling moments are their conversations with a crazy man. They are visited by a former mathematics PhD on leave from the state mental institute. Whether the result of his brilliant mind or his electro-shock therapy, John is consistently honest and unbound by any of society’s conventions. His scenes create great tension – the audience laughs, his parents cringe, and in the heat of this crucible, the changes in the main characters are brought into sharp focus. John’s mocking of their safe little suburban life turns to admiration when they reveal their plans to jump up and move to Paris. He has never met anyone else that honestly deals with the “emptiness and hopelessness” of conventional life like the Wheelers.
But while the lunatic embraces their idea, others are more skeptical. The idea of a poorly financed, find-your-true-self at age 30 with two kids in tow does not make much sense to their friends and co-workers. And when, for complicated reasons, their plans change, so does their relationship with the lunatic. John turns the whole force of his very strong personality into a probing analysis of their decision and relationship with an ugly, ugly result. You are left saddened, but wondering if crazy is the new sane.
Can I use a genre-bending comparison here? I can’t think of too many ways Harry Potter is like Revolutionary Road, but it does portray a sharp division between two kinds of people – the magical wizards and the clueless and ordinary muggles. Real life is experienced by wizards, while muggles, whether through fear or ignorance, just blindly bumble through life.
The Wheelers seem caught in-between – they want to be exceptional and magical, but they also like the comfort and security of a successful, ordinary life. They think for a time that they can be wizards in the muggle world, but they eventually become what they do, transformed by their world instead of transforming it. Once they realize this, they think their Paris plan will free them to become the wizards they believe themselves to be.
We are left with questions – were they wizards who failed to grasp their full life or are they muggles who fancied themselves wizards and flew too close to the sun?
