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Home Subscribe About Us Features News Album Reviews Movie Reviews Past Movies Movie Resources Concert Reviews Book Reviews Top 10 Contact Us	Revolutionary Road Stars: Kate Winslet, Leonardo Di Caprio, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, Richard Easton, and Jay O. Sanders Director: Sam Mendes Scriptwriter: Justin Haythe and Richard Yates based on the 1961 novel by Richard Yates Composer: Thomas Newman Cinematography: Roger Deakins DreamWorks/BBC Films Rating: R for language and nudity Running length: 120 minutes Ah, the suburbs, an American utopia. Just to reach it is to achieve happiness. Or is it? In Richard Yates 1961 novel, the suburbs meant a home, car, job for the husband, children for the wife, neighbors, and household duties. Is this happiness? Alas, not, for the husband finds himself in a daily rut of car/train travel to and from a meaningless job while the wife is stuck with dirty dishes, laundry and drivels of conversations from neighbors who are in the same place. Such is Revolutionary Road, the street where April and Frank Wheeler (Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio) live with their children. The street name is apt, because you either landed there after a life revolution, or there is a revolution coming soon. Helen Givings (Kathy Bates) is the real estate agent who would give movers a headache. She has the "perfect house" for everyone, her husband regularly shuts his hearing aid off in her presence and her son is a male imitation of Estelle Getty's character in "The Golden Girls." At the beginning of the film, April has performed in a play (she wanted to be an actress) and was not well received. Frank offers his comfort, but she won't have it and the argument flares up by the side of the road. Then there is the new house, and April becoming friends with Helen, whose adult son, John, resides in a mental facility. Times passes, and April becomes uneasy in this so-called paradise. Helen offers to bring her son (home on vacation) to dinner at April's house and it is a disaster. His character tells it as he sees it and the dissension could be cut with a knife. Frank begins to have an affair at work, but April decides on a plan. Sell the house and live in Paris. When they were courting---those free and easy days---Paris was a wonderful, carefree place and she has it all figured out. She would get work at an embassy and Frank, an engineer, could figure out what he wants to do. What you see is that April would like to have her own life and leave Frank to be a house-husband. It almost works. On the periphery is their neighbor, Bart (Jay O'Sanders) who secretly loves April and a chance at a higher position in the business for Frank. Are dreams made to be broken? The film can be summed up in the look Bart secretly gives to April. His house is built slightly above hers and he can see into her kitchen. His sadness and poignancy speaks volumes at the trap he is in with a wife and kids looking at something just out of reach. Here are people who secretly long for something else and don't know how they got in the place where they are or how to get out. Kate Winslet puts her all into the role of April and pretty much succeeds. This is her year, with another meaty role being The Reader. You see her despair of sliding into the pit of suburbia, while Frank works behind her back and never really sees who she is. Children are just there. Something that comes with a house in the suburbs, but not exactly planned or wanted. The film is beautifully photographed by Roger Deakins with an elegant score by Thomas Newman. I did not read the novel Revolutionary Road, so don't know how close the film is to the book. As it is, the movie is a tour de force for Winslet, but not so much for Di Caprio, who seems to have every step of his acting planned. The John Givings character is meant to stir the pot, but all it does is become irritating. Everyone waits for his pronouncements and then moves on. Winslet's character stands on the sidelines not quite knowing how to get into the dance, while Di Caprio is in the dance but with an off-beat. This Road is, indeed, a difficult one to live on, and Oscar nomination may come calling for Kate Winslet. Copyright 2009 Marie Asner