REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

Kate and Leo are stuck in the middle of their self-styled suburban nightmare in that white house on Revolutionary Road.

Jack and Rose from Titanic are together again! And not only did they both survive, but they have lived happily ever after in an alternate time and are now a married 30-ish couple. They literally have a white house, with a white picket fence, and two perfect children. This is just how we all swooningly wished it had turned out (if Jack hadn't frozen into a popsicle and sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic).

Except perhaps things didn't turn out so well. Maybe Kate and Leo did meet cute, promised a world of adventure to each other, got married, and ironically bought the house, the car, and started reproducing, just to show the world they weren't like everyone else. But now they're stuck. They're stuck in the middle of their self-styled suburban nightmare in that white house on Revolutionary Road.

Revolutionary Road is a boulevard of broken dreams behind the facade of perfectly-manicured lawns, with the men donning their suits and hats and going off to work in the morning while their wives tend to the home. Since this is the 1950s, it is the original picture-perfect modern lifestyle of cocktail parties and handsome young couples that seem to have it all, just like Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) Wheeler. Well, they may have it all on the outside, but whatever happened to their original youthful dreams? For God's sakes, they weren't supposed to turn into their parents!

Frank finds himself turning into a company man, just like his father. April finds herself stuck at home with the kids and the house, relegated to entertaining occasional guests and pursuing her love of acting in a community theatre troupe. He feels stuck. She feels stuck. So they fight. And they fight a lot.

Revolutionary Road is the perfect anti-date movie. If you've been in your relationship for any length of time, where things have gotten comfortable and a bit routine, Revolutionary Road will make you squirm. I mean, how can it not? Have you ever thought of dropping everything and running off to live in Paris with your partner, so life can be fun and spontaneous like it used to be? Well, have you? You didn't do it, did you? And neither do Frank and April.

And when April gets pregnant with her third child, and Frank gets a fabulous promotion at work, what should be good news actually feels like the end of the world to them. Their fights escalate and the cracks in their relationship start to shatter. If you wonder why both Kate and Leo have been collecting accolades and awards for this film, just cringe through the brutally honest screaming matches that have built and built towards an irreparable crescendo by the end of the film. Let me just warn: if you grew up in a house where your parents screamed at each other, stay far away from Revolutionary Road.

That said, despite my admiration for the craft of the film, and the fine acting and production values, I have to say that it was hard to enjoy this film. It is brutal, mean, sad, and heartbreaking. First the arguments seemed rather stagey and uninvolving for me, but when the raw honesty emerged (about halfway through) and the characters started to rip each other apart where it really hurt the most, the movie became extremely difficult to watch.

Can I recommend Revolutionary Road? Most definitely. Can I recommend it to everyone? Most definitely not. This is the anti-feel-good movie of the awards season, so be forewarned. It may hit quite literally too close to home for many, many viewers.

DVD NOTES

The Revolutionary Road DVD includes feature commentary by director Sam Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe, who discuss, among other things, the film adaptation versus the original source, the 1961 novel by Richard Yates. There are also a handful of deleted scenes (with optional commentary), and a making-of documentary "Lives of Quiet Desperation: The Making of Revolutionary Road".