Review: Revolutionary Road

There's a small assortment of films out there that I've found over time deserve their own subgenre, which I have cumbersomely titled "Great Films That Should Never Be Watched More Than Once." For example, as powerful as "Requiem For A Dream" is, do you really want to watch it repeatedly? The latest addition to this category is "Revolutionary Road," Sam Mendes' latest assault on the oppression and banality of suburban life after he won Best Picture for "American Beauty" eight years ago.

The film is the story of the Wheelers, April (Kate Winslet) and Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), and their rapid decline into a profound loathing of each other. They start off like a couple we've all known, talked to, been parented by, etc. They meet, young and idealistic, after locking eyes from across a crowded room. She tells him "You might be the most interesting man I've ever known." Love blossoms, and soon they are married and moving out of the city to raise a family. In one of the film's cruelest touches, we don't get the comfort of seeing them in better times. Soon, the gravity of living in the suburbs and being just like everybody else begins to weigh heavily on both of them.

April has a plan, however. They'll move back to Paris. After all, Paris is where Frank was happiest in his youth, so they can go back. She'll even work as a government secretary so that he can find himself. It's a perfect plan, one that will save their marriage and allow them to be the people that they want to be, instead of the people they've become. Needless to say, not everything goes according to plan. The trouble with reviewing a film of this nature is that it is, above all other things, a character study, and so revealing anymore would tarnish the impact of the performances, which are the center of the film.

As performances go, this film features what may very well be the year's two best. DiCaprio and Winslet are both absolutely brilliant. They are so filled with hope early on that when things go south, we feel every moment of their pain, we are stung by every venomous barb they throw at each other. Winslet is especially impressive; in "The Reader," also in theaters now, she looked like she was sleeping through the film. Here, she is fearless. In her hands, April is sympathetic even as she does increasingly bad things without a hint of repentance. She fell in love with a man for all the things he once was and no longer is, and this has caused a massive upheaval of her existence; after all, we all know what happens when you make one thing your entire life and that single thing fails you in the long run.

Frank, however, is every bit as devastated. Unlike April, he feels as though he has to keep his cards hidden close to the chest. As the man of the family, he must provide and keep a level head. When he begins to feel as though April is emasculating him, he must subsequently find ways to make himself feel truly like a man again. He must also find a way to understand April, but what he cannot see is that she is beyond understanding. They are two people not made for each other, and have been together too long to overcome this.

The casting of these two in particular, I think, is quite cruel. After all, the last film they starred in was "Titanic," the highest-grossing film of all time. More importantly, in that film they played Jack and Rose, possibly the most iconic lovers in cinema history. (I've personally always preferred Rick and Ilsa, but that's just me.) Because of this immediate association with the undying power of true love, watching them rip each other to shreds in this film attains an entirely different level of devastation besides the obvious.

I often have trouble speaking highly of movies like this, because going back to the beginning of this review, it's difficult to say that I enjoyed a movie this depressing. Then, however, I think of something Roger Ebert said when he reviewed "The Weather Man," a criminally underrated film that also serves as a dark character study: "No good movie should ever be called depressing." "Revolutionary Road" is a good film, though not a great one. The sterility of everything around the Wheelers feels a bit forced; though I know Mendes meant to further illustrate the central concept, it's a bit much. It's good enough to deserve the likely Best Picture nomination, I can say that. Will it be relevant years from now? To some, sure, but not to all. I can see the same people who hated "American Beauty" disliking this film, and I personally preferred the former.