An ‘American Beauty’ by any other name

Revolutionary Road
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Has there ever been a normal suburban family in the movies? I don’t think so; the happy ones are only reserved for sitcoms and ads for Wonder bread and laundry soap.

The family in Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road” is one of the most self-destructive I’ve seen on film: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play a husband and wife who look to be the very embodiment of 1950s Middle America, yet who have fallen out of love and are determined to deflate one another in scene after scene of ruthless verbal sparring.

“You’re a sorry excuse for a man,” she tells him, and “I loathe the very sight of you,” to which he tells her that meeting her was mistake, marrying her was a mistake and having children with her was a mistake. It is brutal material, executed with blunt force.

Mendes and writer Justin Haythe are clearly trying to capture the marital tête-à-tête that Mike Nichols mastered in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” but this movie doesn’t have the wit or the magnetism of that film, and it plays like a long, exhausting therapy session.

This movie must have looked smashing on paper. It is an adaptation of Richard Yates’ acclaimed 1961 novel, directed by the reliable Sam Mendes, shot by Roger Deakins, scored by Thomas Newman and starring DiCaprio and Winslet, who are two of our best actors and who haven’t appeared on-screen together since “Titanic.”

Theoretically, it should have been a masterpiece, and it is technically impressive, acted and photographed with great skill. But the movie has only one grim note to play, which it does relentlessly for two hours.

DiCaprio is Frank Wheeler, who has never decided what he really wants to do with his life, and finds himself stuck in the same monotonous nine-to-five job his father had thirty years ago. Winslet is April, who has grown weary of her duties as housewife and mother; she folds the laundry and makes the beds and cooks all the meals herself, but she really wants to be an actress.

Suddenly realizing that life has caught up with them too quickly, they decide they’ll move to Paris; April will find a secretarial job, Frank will stay at home with the kids. Their friends (David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn) seem surprised by their plans: “Frank isn’t going to work?” they ask, astounded. The woman will be the breadwinner? Unheard of.

Frank and April seem content by their future prospects, glad to finally pull the rug out from under their miserable conditions. But then Frank gets an irresistible promotion at work, and April discovers she’s pregnant, and how could they move, Frank wants to know, at a time like this?

Their animosity toward one another accelerates to the point where their living room shouting matches become a nightly occurrence. They both have extra-marital affairs—Frank with a young secretary at work, April with the next door neighbor. Their children completely disappear, likely in the care of a friend or relative. They are empty shells; all the energy they have is reserved for their heated arguments.

And yet, every morning, there April is, wearing an apron in the sun-drenched kitchen. With a forced smile spread across her face, she asks her husband, “Fried or scrambled?”

Recalling the plot makes me wish I could praise the film over the moon and back again. It reads as powerful. Winslet and DiCaprio are both very good here, and Mendes has a sure hand, the sets and costumes accurately capture a definitive time and place, and Deakins’ cinematography is sometimes stunning—one particular shot, which begins on Winslet’s face and slowly pulls back to reveal something truly horrible, will haunt you.

But “Revolutionary Road” just doesn’t approach its material in the most effective way. Think about “Virginia Woolf,” which centered on the relationship of two thoroughly unpleasant characters, but it had no better opinion of them than we did. And Mendes’ own “American Beauty,” which also followed a suburban family in crisis, was more voyeuristic—we were on the outside, looking in, at a life that we would not like to be in.

This movie doesn’t equal “Virginia Woolf” because it wants us to sympathize with Frank and April, even though they are despicable people. And it doesn’t replicate the power of “American Beauty” because we feel as though we’re trapped in a very small room with a couple who just won’t stop bickering, and it gets tiresome.

The film is also strangely antiseptic, a movie that, for all its attempted emotional fireworks, always feels like an exercise. I recommend you go back and watch “American Beauty,” which approached the subjects of marital disintegration and suburban alienation with more insight and humor. That movie at least allowed us to breathe; “Revolutionary Road” is stifling all the way through.

Grade: C+

Directed by Sam Mendes. Written by Justin Haythe. Based on the novel by Richard Yates. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, David Harbour and Dylan Baker. R; 119m.