Revolutionary Road
Much of the hoopla surrounding Revolutionary Road on release was that it saw the first time Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio reunited onscreen since Titanic. As much as the latte is glorious pantomime, Road, Sam Mendes’ adaptation of Richard Yates’ 1961 novel, is a melancholy, raw, riveting chamber-piece about fading hopes, emotional disenfranchisement and despair amongst gorgeous soft-furnishings, a film with more icy depth and sense of impending doom. Their hearts don’t go on, they get stuck in a rut and the realisation is rendered beautifully, achingly honest and depressing.
On the face of it, Revolutionary Road is yet another peek behind the façade of the suburban idyll but it is so much more than that. In detailing the marriage of ‘office machines’ salesman Frank (Leo) and failed actress April (Kate) from a hopeful young couple dreaming of a life in Paris to unhappily married and imprisoned in Connecticut, Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe touch on everything from the push and pull of security, the different ways that men and women argue (Di Caprio and Winslet row with unnerving ferocity) and the heartbreak of thwarted ambitions: earlier on, April declares a wish ‘to be wonderful in the world’. Road evokes the fallout when people realise their lives (romantic, professional, artistic) aren’t as special as they hoped they’d be.
But Mendes’ real gift lies in casting and performance. A special mention exposes the fissures that no-one else addresses. DiCaprio brings electrifying energy to his defeated man, recalling a young Nicholson or De Niro. But this is Winslet’s show, courageous and sensitive, without one false note. Preparing her husband’s breakfast while masking a world of torment under a frozen exterior is a master class in film acting.
