The Road You Didn't Take, Where Would It Have Led?

Review: Revolutionary Road

Can't stay, can't leave. Revolutionary Road is almost gruesome to watch as the marriage of Frank and April Wheeler unravels, but I chose to stay rather than leave. From what I've read, audiences have been divided: either they are blown away by the craft put into the film, or they are put off. Revolutionary Road is blisteringly unconventional in that we don't follow a couple from idealization to disintegration. We see April with her fading dreams of being extraordinary, and Frank as he brusquely shatters them.

And so Sam Mendes achieves a stunning sleight of character identification. We should hate Frank (and this all happens in the first ten minutes, so not really a spoiler). He trades his wanderlust for the anonymity of the corporate world; he resigns his wife to taking out the garbage; even a girl on the side is no more than "swell." So we gravitate toward April as she proposes an act of spiritual rejuvenation: they will leave the trap of suburbia and move to Paris, where she will escape her housewife duties and earn the family's living.

Though Mendes distances us from the Wheelers, they begin to grow on us as they reconstruct their existence. We forgive Frank, for he loves April so greatly that he will gladly sacrifice almost everything so that she may be fulfilled. And when pressures mount and the future grows dimmer, April seems so vivid, so eager for transformation, that we realize flesh and blood have emerged from the cocoon of their surroundings, and the sleek direction of the film.

So yes, the film begins as sterile, because this is not a story of disillusionment, but of the next step: how to combat it when it thoroughly encases you. It's also not aiming for realism. April's dreams are grandiose and her yearning so great that her story becomes more of a fable. As good as Leonardo DiCaprio is, and he's grown impressive in his ability to emotionally carry a scene, Kate Winslet floored me. April in her hands isn't noble or entirely sympathetic, and I think her emotional progression would be unfathomable if any other actress attempted it. Winslet rips off mask after mask, with searing hurt and bewilderment mixed with resoluteness, as April refuses to succumb to lifelessness. Nor will Winslet.



I think Mendes blames suburbia too easily. While the stifling setting and rigid gender roles of the late 1950s are an apt time for this story, the problems are largely internal. Frank will compromise while April craves anything but. DiCaprio still resembles a man-child, with a Peter Pan streak that makes it hard to believe his willingness to blend in. I wish he'd had a chance to portray the uninhibited Frank, and why April found him the most interesting person she's met. But the film is refreshingly bleak and unsentimental. The fact that Mendes keeps the Wheelers on Revolutionary Road from becoming symbols or icons is alone extraordinary.