Revolutionary Road

If you can afford to stream movies in the comfort of your own home ...but yet still feel trapped in that home, this movie will really speak to you. I think the haunting piano score is the the best part about the film because it spoke to me something internal.. about oh yeah, that's right this life is only one way and I'm running out of time.. whatever happened to my goals and dreams..?. Yes, this is a movie about first world problems.. full of beautiful suburbia, big homes, green lawns, good looking rich, white folk with 2 perfect kids. Yet the couple is miserable. They have it all. Yet, its not enough. He is doing the same stupid job his father did. She flamed out on pursuing being famous.. and has a bad case of Margaret Mead's "problem with no name." Its bleak and too familiar. We don't have to worry about clean water, I mean unless you're in Michigan.. so this is what a great number of us deal with.. that crushing unhappiness and subtle reminder that this is your last chance.. no one gets out of here alive. Will you envy the dancers or go dancing yourself? Just 3 days ago I was fired from a job working for a jerk I hated.. (it was his mistake, sorry but I was the good guy here and people are still upset I got rail roaded)... anyhow, that jerk and watching this movie reminded me of some goals I haven't yet achieved.. .to live and thrive as a single man in NYC while I still can.. before I get too old and it all slips away.. cue the piano....

The acting is great. Kate and Leo did an excellent job. So I give 1 star for each of them. But this movie is terribly depressing and it drags. It's about abortion which if I had known, I wouldn't have watched. I kept checking the time line to see how much time was left. I couldn't wait for it to end. I'm not one to watch movies because of the score or cinematography. I watch movies for entertainment and my time is precious. I don't like wasting 2 hours of my life on something that didn't even entertain me. Kept hoping it would get better. There is just too much going on with not enough explanation. Too many ups and downs. They fall in love but no real backstory to that and then they jump from first meeting to married with kids in suburbia. They are unhappy but no real back story as to why either. He has a job he is unhappy in but who doesn't? I mean, really man up. She wanted to be an actress but stinks and couldn't even hack it in a local crappy play and so now hates her life of mom and wife. I found the character to be a brat. She can't act and some how it's her husband's fault. About more than half of the movie is spent on the idea that they will run off to Paris, with no jobs. Apparently, running away to another country is how you fix being an unhappy stay at home mom. The whole Paris thing was stupid and unrealistic and I felt obvious it was never going to happen. Then hates her husband for not going to Paris, which is a stupid reason to hate your husband. Unrealistic reasons for marital problems. Also, unrealistic that any woman would cheat on their hot husband with some old, ugly next door neighbor.

Terribly thought provoking...and too true...but not for all. Escaping into the great roles played is easy, given the quality of acting, but it's too important to recognize they do not represent all families...at least those who grow together...who convey their true character, blemishes and all, who trust...not because it is earned, but because it is promised in the vows of marriage. Growing together is the key...too few, and this couple, so easily lose along the way....

This movie is about truth. The acting - writing - cinematography - everything was excellent. Most people live lives of quiet desperation. Most people don't pursue their dreams, enjoy their work, or lives life with passion. They jump on the hamster wheel in pursuit or the "American dream" and material gratification. Denial and alcohol will keep them going and FB "likes" on their posts and happy looking pictures helps keep the illusion alive.

It is truly a thought-provoking movie - add to this the above average acting of Kate Winslet and Leonardo, you get the perfect movie.After watching this movie - my wife asked me not to show movies like this again - it is really depressing so be ready for it. I would watch it all over again, it is really a true reflection of the reality of our dreams, aspirations. The escapism by trying to find pleasure in things ... the desire to do something radical hoping that it will change things ...Overall a beautiful, thought-provoking and depressing movie.

The first row begins only five minutes into the movie, and they become set pieces at persistent intervals. They are not as ‘bad’ as Richard Burton’s and Elizabeth Taylor’s magnificent arguments in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’, but they are certainly just as well acted, despite Kate’s and Leo’s characters lacking the depth and sophistication of those of Burton and Taylor.Kate and Leo are April and Frank Wheeler, a handsome couple in 1950s America, living the dream in the Connecticut burbs. Whilst Frank works in New York City, April becomes a slowly despairing housewife whose dreams of a more fulfilling life are slowly eroded.For April and Frank have plans to run away from what they tell John, an acquaintance, is “the hopeless emptiness of the whole life here.” John perceptively replies, “People are on to the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” Later, when their plans change, John will accuse Frank of being “too comfy” in his hopeless emptiness. (Sound familiar? I guess we are all too comfortable in our daily grind.) Meanwhile Kate feels that life in the burbs is draining her vitality.It’s an excellent subject for a film, of course, how we are seduced by the prospect of more money to blind ourselves from the pointlessness of earning it. But this film surprisingly, despite all the arguments and traumas contained therein, lacks bite. It has become here an everyday story of an everyday existence. A reviewer in ‘Philosophy Now’ made great play of the existential core of the movie, but existentialism is the essence of the quotidian. It’s all well done, of course, and the acting is faultless.But when compared to another Kate Winslet film of that year, ‘The Reader’, or to the director’s earlier masterpiece, ‘American Beauty’, we can see what is missing from the heart of ‘Revolutionary Road’, and that is tragedy. It is there, of course, but merely latent and undeveloped, or rather it is misplaced or even lost in the edit. In short, and without giving the plot away, the film should have ended at 1:42 – or 1:44 at the latest. Then, maybe, it might have been worth four stars, but the rest of the film after these timings simply supplies an anticlimax, robbing the story of any tragic denouement that the viewer can mull over when they leave the cinema – or leave the living room to make that essential cup of tea.But even so, the film has a mountain to climb because we do not come to love Frank or April Wheeler as we come to love Lester Burnham of ‘American Beauty’. Frank and April come across as beautiful but largely empty people. Sure they have dreams, but they are indistinct; they are the negative dreams of escape rather than the positive dreams of action and intent. They appear to have no interests, not even the most empty-headed hobbies of their class and era such as golf or flower arranging. They are sad and empty people and we thus find it difficult to relate to any sense of tragedy in their lives.As in that earlier Sam Mendes’s film, the soundtrack is provided by Thomas Newman. In ‘Revolutionary Road’ he equals the high standards of the former movie by here employing a haunting three-note figure that is subtly moulded and transformed depending on the atmosphere of the scene.The commentary in the extras is provided by director Sam Mendes (who was at the time married to Kate Winslet) and screenwriter Justin Haythe. They talk much about the book and the differences between it and the final script. They concede that this is a dark film that was never going to be popular. They also saw the house as a character in its own right, first becoming a symbol of freedom but gradually over time becoming Kate’s prison. Finally, Mendes points out the visual ‘Titanic’ joke that is half-hidden in the film. Other extras on my DVD include ten minutes of deleted scenes and a thirty-minute ‘making of’ documentary.

I've been a Kate and Leo fan ever since Titanic back in '97. I was delighted to learn that they have remained close friends to this day and I think this is reflected within their performance in Revolutionary Road. The first time I watched this was on a flight back from New York and I must admit I fell asleep and thought 'what a load of b******s' but time is a wonderful thing, and as I've matured so has my taste for films and appreciation of fine actors such as these. The film itself is very well made with good acting but I couldn't help but wonder whether it would have been more at home on the stage as opposed to the big screen. The story is very depressing, I haven't read the book but I am meaning to. I don't think anyone without an interest in movies would enjoy this film, it can be a bit hard-going at times and definately isn't a light-hearted Saturday night in-kinda film. I think we can all relate to aspects of this film at times, particularly the fear that April expresses at becoming an ordinary suburban 50's housewife. I am not married or a mother yet, but it's a fear I too have although I would hope my fate wouldn't match that of Frank and April! It's interesting how Kate and Leo's portrayal really epitimises the expectations we feel we must fulfil in order to live up to society's standards.

When I first watched this movie it pretty much passed me by. But the theme of the movie, for which I was personally touched, meant that I was too compelled to watch it again, and again and now I've watched it about five times and it seems rather like peeling an onion: it not only draws tears but the layers reveal more and more each time I see it. The film is full of contrast: light meets dark and each make up a whole day but are ultimately separate: two people that do love each other, owed to a relationship largely built on shared dreams for better times ahead, soon find they can't live with each other when those dreams remain unrealised. Yet they can't live without each other either - given the norms of the times where divorce was frowned upon and convenient living took a very very back seat to Christian morality and rigid social conformity, typical of suburban life in the 1950s. Kate Winslet gives a stunning acting performance as the ambitious forward thinking suburban housewife who is 'saddled' with two kids - one a mistake - that she certainly never did and still doesn't want her entire life to revolve around. She wants to be free to step out of her comfort zone to live a life of adventure and support her husband in fulfiling his dreams and ambitions too, once he finds out what he wants to do. Yet, DeCaprio as her conformist husband Frank, whose dreams for living a true life were once there when he first met and married April are never truly re-awakened now that his role of family man has bedded in - not helped by a feeling of obligation to his father's memory to live out his career as a Knox man and his breadwinner's obligation to provide for his growing family. To put it another way, April was willing to bash down the Berlin wall of her restricted world, to save her own sanity, but her husband did not have the nerve to venture into new unfamiliar territory and find out what he truly wanted from the world and from life and would rather believe that his wife was insane to still want that. Night becomes day, day becomes night....in Frank's not so brave new world.The line that sticks in my mind, as expertly delivered by a desperate, tearful April Wheeler is this: "you know what is so good about the truth Frank? No one forgets what it is, no matter how long they've lived without it, they just get better at lying." To April night remains dark and day remains in daylight.If you haven't read it yet, buy the book: "Feel the fear and do it anyway". The message is simple. If a chance comes your way, just grab it and run with it. At the end of the film you see April taking on the role of Stepford wife for the day by trying to model her existence on her husband's day is night world but it was a price that was far too high for her to pay and ultimately darkness was all that was left for her.

This film is a masterpiece of its kind. Adapted from the (strongly reccomended) novel by Richard Yates, it shows the underside of life in the affluent suburbs of Eisenhower's America, through a marriage, and more specifically through the persona of April played by Kate Winslett. This is not a cheerful film, it explores much the same dramatic milieu as Sam Mendes first film American Beauty, though set further back in time. The original novel is surely the fountainhead from which the TV series Madmen sprang and there are crossover moments and images common to both. Kate Winslet is wonderful as April and Leonardo di Caprio plays against his baby face looks as Frank her husband. They are surrounded by excellent supporting performances, the design and the cinematography (the peerless Roger Deakins) are superb and all is held together with another fine score from Thomas Newman, and all lift this above an average 'miserable marriage' movie into high tragedy. The Blu-ray is gorgeous to behold unmissable.

Revolutionary Road is an interesting drama and Sam Mendes directs it excellently. Kate Winslet is superb as as the unfulfilled housewife and Di Caprio is unnervingly bland as the well intentioned but unexciting husband.This film should be quite dull and boring (it is largely a film about dullness and boredom), yet by the end of it the performances are truly mesmerising. Not a pleasant film, but a film to treasure nonetheless.