Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008)

[tavernier]

Moviscop has morphed into Armond White--so who is Barmy?

[Binker]

Armond put it brilliantly when he said "Leo and Kate resist a Catch Me If You Can good time." This is what bugged me so much about their performances. Their was that faint insincerity in their performances. It was almost like they were laughing in-between takes.

Independent of context, that quote appears to be in direct conflict with your next two lines.

[moviscop]

Armond put it brilliantly when he said "Leo and Kate resist a Catch Me If You Can good time." This is what bugged me so much about their performances. Their was that faint insincerity in their performances. It was almost like they were laughing in-between takes.

Independent of context, that quote appears to be in direct conflict with your next two lines.

It really depends on how you look at it and how you see it in the film.

[Binker]

No, the film is irrelevant. My point is, Armond seems to be saying that the actors resisted having fun with the material. Meaning, they were not being insincere or laughing in between takes, but rather taking it very seriously. You agree with Armond's quote and then proceed to directly contradict it.

[moviscop]

I misinterpreted his words as being in defense of what I was talking about.

But on the same note, was anyone else bothered by DiCaprio's inability to separate his Blood Diamond character from his Revolutionary Road one?

Biggest blunder of 08 I think.

[mfunk9786]

Who wouldn't be laughing between takes with this material to work with? The entire film was hammier than a Lumberjack Slam.

[Thomas J.]

Am I the only one who feels that Julianne Moore's plotline in THE HOURS says the same thing REVOLUTIONARY ROAD does, but in a third of the amount of time?

I also feel the film is hurt by neglecting to show how Leo's and Kate's characters managed to get themselves into this situation in the first place. Lipservice is paid to their initial attraction at a party and to Kate's character being a failed artist (information which is insufficient to explaining future marital discord, imo) and then, bam, we jump right to the dissolution of their relationship. Some suburban viewers might not recognize themselves or their neighbors in these characters, so maybe it would have been prudent to spend 15 mins showing their extended honeymoon period i.e. ostensible marital bliss, so that we as viewers could recognize our happy relationships potentially leading to the the denouement depicted in scene 2 onward. Without something like this, the viewer is left grasping at straws as to what the moral of the story is beyond, well, what THE HOURS already said.

[Grand Illusion]

I also feel the film is hurt by neglecting to show how Leo's and Kate's characters managed to get themselves into this situation in the first place.

I agree. In fact, this was my prevailing thought through the initial sequences. When Leo almost hits Kate outside the car at the beginning of the film, I thought the film already wasted a dramatic high point.

That said, as the film went on, I found myself being drawn into the characters and situation nonetheless. It's an extremely frightening film. Complacency is scarier to me than any zombie or serial killer. I did feel that the film made a compelling argument exactly why complacency is so easy. Money and children are both a blessing and curse, but another tangential factor was Leo's job security. In this economy, it's easy to recognize how important that is, even when you hate your job.

I felt DiCaprio really put everything into this role, but I was merely satisfied with Winslet. I found a lot of her choices pedestrian and obvious. She had a few stand-out moments, but overall, she seemingly went with the predictable choices, never playing against the lines, not at all like her performance in The Reader. If her decisions were emotionally resonant for her, then they are hard to argue, but the film is extremely dependent on performance, so it's open to critique.

The ending and the plot device leading up to it seemed arbitrary, and I'm not sure the way it reads in the book would make me feel much different. It seems the easy resolution is

Spoiler

to kill one of the two characters. They are one another's antagonists and, as such, could not coexist past the end of the film in movieland. But we do not exist in movieland, and in modern society, abortions aren't nearly as dangerous. For me, this muddied the mirror held up against modern suburban dystopia.

I didn't feel the lessons were as applicable to modern society or to real life because Revolutionary Road takes the "easy way" by killing one of the main characters. Instead, most discontent suburbanites have to make the decision themselves to leave their spouse or live in misery. They don't have a writer deciding for them.

I'm perhaps being overly critical. I actually found the film to be powerful and quite scary. The supporting players in classical fashion all provide different portals through which to view the main relationship, and this worked quite well also. It's not Scenes From a Marriage, but it's a well-told story with a great performance and a solid one.

[karmajuice]

Just watched this last night. I'll start by saying that I haven't read the novel, so I have no basis of comparison. I'll also make it clear from the get-go that the film didn't impress me. It colored everything the right color and made sure to stay within the lines.

Even now, the film escapes my memory. DiCaprio's performance was pretty good, I think. I found Winslet's performance annoying throughout, though that may be a symptom of my disdain for women playing the role of the noble innocent, a tradition I've become wary of. In the end, I didn't feel anything for either of them. When

Spoiler

Winslet performs the abortion on herself and we see her bleeding, I did not care that she was dying. In fact, all I could wonder was whether the blood was digitally edited into the shot afterward. I assumed it was.

And speaking of that scene, why does every suburban melodrama recently have to end with some absurdly devastating and bloody ending? American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, Little Children. . . there's an interesting connection between the mangling of sexual organs in RR and LC, which seems to suggest some kind of sexual/spiritual self-destruction and subsequent sterility, but that's made moot when one considers how over-the-top these endings are. They're the easy way out. We're living in a time when people don't die very easily, or very often, compared to yester-years. Tragedies ending in death belong in Shakespeare. Modern tragedy is about living and not knowing how to die.

One other thing I'd like to comment on:

All the other characters merely serve as enablers or sounding boards or, in the case of Michael Shannon, reflections of truth.

This is largely true, but I don't think it's wise to dismiss these characters. The primary drama of the detiorating marriage left me utterly indifferent, but these peripheral characters had the best moments in the film, the moments that came closest to actually affecting me. I'm thinking of Millie in the bedroom, her husband after learning about April's auto-abortion, the man with the hearing aid at the end of the film. These vignettes had something in them, maybe only through the power of suggestion (since we see so little of their characters otherwise), but that's still something.

As for Michael Shannon, while I enjoyed his performance, that character is just a matter of lazy, lazy writing.

[Magic Hate Ball]

I've read a couple times that this film is similar to Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. Is this true at all, or are they just saying this because it's also about a couple who fights?

The entire film was hammier than a Lumberjack Slam.

Heh.

[oldsheperd]

Watched this last night. I don't really know what to make of it. It's hard to sympathize with any character in the film since they are both pretty crummy. I was curious to see if this was a movie from a feminist or masculin perspective. Mendes seems to take the stance that the Winslet character is the victim but I'm not sure.

One plot point:

Spoiler

The whole thing about Paris. Was Mendes/Yates saying something that running away to Paris would solve all their problems? If so that would be pretty cheap. Winslet gives DiCaprio one of the dumbest reasons for going and when he is asked what he's going to do, DiCaprio replies that he'll read and study. It was really hard for me to read into. On one hand when they decide to move to Paris everything is rosier but there's no indication that DiCaprio's character is going to benefit from moving.

[aox]

I watched this last night as well for the first time. I never complain about not being able to relate to any character, but this movie gave me nothing else to do. Every time I would get close to relating to these people's lives, I would then be forced to remind myself that they are both scumbags. However, I was more sympathetic to Winslet's character. He exploration into adultery didn't seem nearly as frivolous to me for some reason. Regardless, the film was well shot and Winslet and DiCaprio's performances were top-notch, but Scenes from a Marriage it is not.

I certainly liked this more than the Reader though which I thought was an abortion and proof positive (along with last year's The Counterfeiters)that we are really scrapping the bottom of the barrel for stories having to do with Nazis. I'm not even touching The Boy in Stripped Pajamas.

[oldsheperd]

I guess I could sympathize more with DiCaprio's character more. Winslet's seemed very reactionary and somewhat vindictive.

[Dr Amicus]

I'm not even touching The Boy in Stripped Pajamas.

I should hope not too - you'll find yourself on the Sex Offenders Register.

[Dylan]

Both DiCaprio and Winslet are astonishing (both performances are very theatrical the same way many were in cinema's Golden Age, and my eyes glistened during many scenes), and Michael Shannon is amazing. It has beautiful cinematography. The songs (especially the opening number by the Ink Spots) are very well chosen but the score sounds like American Beauty redux (amusing in 1999, cliche now), and waaaaay too modern for this film. Thomas Newman should've been directed to write a Golden Age score ala The Good German, not recycle piano outtakes from American Beauty.

[oldsheperd]

I may be alone on this but I kept thinking about the melodramas of Douglas Sirk when I was watching this.

I did get the idea that Frank(DiCaprio) was looking for some sort of worth and validation from his wife that what he was doing working for Knox was okay.
I believe that was why he got so emotional during the birthday scene and when Winslet tells him that he should be proud of what he does.

[Magic Hate Ball]

Kate Winslet's eyebrows distracted me throughought this film. She looked like a post-op transsexual.