Lost Liberty Café

Revolutionary Road: A Review

on Jan.31, 2009, under Reviews

by Jessen Starshine

“Tell me the truth, Frank – remember that? We used to live by it. And you know what’s so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they’ve lived without it. No one forgets the truth, Frank. They just get better at lying.”

I decided to go see the movie Revolutionary Road today, because:

1. I had a free ticket

2. Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet are so mmmm, I would watch a movie where they stood still the entire time

3. It is directed by Sam Mendes, who also directed American Beauty, a favourite movie of mine

4. My unconscious drove me to see it so that I could understand something about myself.

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Honestly I don’t know whether I would recommend this movie or not. It’s not a bad movie – everything about it is superbly done, the acting, the script – but I was completely horrified by it. I was frozen, heart pounding, horrified. Not horrified because anything particularly disgusting or violent happens -although there were a few times where the characters came close to hitting each other- but because of the psychological torture they inflict on each other. I don’t think I would want anyone else to experience what I did watching this movie – but at the same time, I think it was important that I did.

Basically what happens over the course of two hours, is the characters played by Leonardo and Kate psychologically strangle each other until they are completely broken and soulless. Their friends and colleagues act as if everything is normal while these two people mentally hack each other to death piece by piece. It’s not like those “War of the Roses” -type movies where the hatred and disgust the characters have for each other is turned into “comedy”, it is raw, unadulterated misery. This is real life, of course. This is what most relationships are – people locked in a battle-dance until there is nothing left of them.There is the destructive, needling passive aggression that escalates into screaming, and then there are the temporary “solutions” to the problems that leave them with a false high, until the euphoria wears off and they are at each other’s throats again. This is the path I was taking in my relationships until I joined FDR.

I felt sick watching this, and the part that sickened me most, was the fact that I was the only one who felt sickened. Several times throughout the movie, the whole audience burst into laughter. There is nothing funny about this movie, intentionally or unintentionally. They seemed to laugh most at a ’schizophrenic’ character who was the only one who dared point out the misery of everyone else. Like an “Oh, he so did not just go there!” kind of thing. It was about as funny as somebody pointing out a corpse that everyone else is stepping over. I guess they had to find relief from their anxiety somehow.

This movie is a gritty and realistic portrayal of the seething corruption behind the white picket fences of suburbia, with no respite for the characters. No one turns out to be a moral hero and nobody is saved. There is no anti-hero to root for like in American Beauty, there are no caricatures and parodies to laugh at like in Desperate Housewives, which both follow a similar kind of theme. No buffers to obscure what is being said.

I would say that this is a very important movie, and Sam Mendes has done what he set out to do – lift the veil of the “American Dream” – in a horribly perfect way. I did not enjoy the movie, but I didn’t hate it. It was not poorly made, but I could not watch it again. It had a profound psychological effect on me that is still in the works of being processed. I think I will learn a lot about myself from it.

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3 comments for this entry:
  1. sylvia
    February 1st, 2009 on 23:13

    i randomly came across this post while searching for quotes from revolutionary road, and to be quite honest with you, i am so glad that there is someone out there who feels the same way i do after seeing the film. the dinner scene between the wheelers and the givings’ and the subsequent laughter from the theatre audience literally outraged me. i was so disgusted, almost to the point of becoming physically ill.

    to me, this was the most poignant and deep cutting scene in the entire film. i am a point in my young life where i am trying to figure out who it is i am and what it is i want. it literally scares me to death to end up hating the person i married. choosing the “white picket fence” over true happiness and freedom, and trying to convince myself that the “white picket fence” is true happiness. ending up living the hopeless emptiness. witnessing these people laughing at this scene just proved to me once again how stupid and ignorant [in general] people are. to not be able to see the tragedy in the living “the american dream.” to completely miss the point of one of the most telling scenes of a film that completely reveals the potential ugliness in the american idea of “home” and “family,” and how someone who is supposedly crazy is the only one who recognizes it.

    to me, this film really hit hard. i would say that i recommend this film for everyone, but unfortunately the message will probably be lost on more people than not. so for the people smart enough to recognize their dreams and go for them, go see this film.

  2. Gwen
    March 29th, 2009 on 19:04

    I saw Revolutionary Road last night in a restored historic theater – the kind of place where people go to see top quality movies… the kind of place where you’d expect to encounter folks who are more sensitive and enlightened than the average ugly American.
    I was horrified when the house began to laugh during the dinner scene, and I couldn’t help from asking my husband, fairly loudly, “What do they think is so funny about this?”
    Of course, they sat in stunned silence just seconds later, but that reaction sent shivers down my spine, and I wonder, where the heck are we headed in this society when people find this misery and hurtfulness to be humerous?
    I guess I feel a little better knowing I’m not the only one who felt this way, but then too, I suppose it really does little to comfort me to learn that my “crowd” wasn’t the only one that reacted this way.
    Sylvia – ah, dreams. Yes, we should all pursue them, but we also need to recognize there are dreams and pursuits that can be destructive and it’s important to find the beauty, comfort and love around us. There are dozens of lessons in this film, but I didn’t find any of them to be side-splitting.

  3. Dominick Pascual
    January 7th, 2010 on 20:23

    I read that he was to eager do a Coronation Street cameo Lol. do you know if this is true? There’s a part of me that kind of wishes this is true lol.

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