You were swell.

Rating: 6/10 (28 September 2016)

In speaking of his classic novel Revolutionary Road, Richary Yates sees it as an indictment of 50s America clinging onto the modest living that would see so many families safely through the middle class years, not lavishly but comfortably enough. He is on the Wheelers' side of things, and even as he punishes them he sympathises and looks harshly on the neighbours who would immediately be trash-talking the moment their back is turned. When I first read the novel I was much younger and as such very taken by the Wheelers' attempted flight into the sun. Conformity is the mortal enemy of youth, and naturally I too was cheering alongside the pair as they tried desperately to escape the suburban prison that stifled them. But now, years on, I recognise that the story is more complex than that. In showing how glum the middle-class existence is Yates (however intentionally or not) also reveals how very broken and flawed Frank and April are. The couple have internalised a quarter-life of misery, regret and missed opportunities so thoroughly that they clutch blindly at the first chance of a change, no matter how little they have thought of the risks and responsibilities they are leaving behind. Like that first sexual encounter they revel in the brief fervour of the decision, and when that breaks down, foolishly and falsely in empty affairs.
At least some of this has survived the tricky process of adaptation in Sam Mendes' film. Unlike the similar American Beauty, which had the camera caress and lavish the open spaces and spotless canvases of the more prosperous 90s, in Revolutionary Road the walls should compress and close in on the Wheelers. The compositions are sharp all the same, but not inspired. Mendes can't recreate the subtext of the novel in any other way except through flashy and shouty dialogue, which merely simplifies the entire struggle of the family. He has cut the suffocating hum-drum of the Shep and Millie dinners, and missed a vital opportunity to showcase how the environment reinforces the behaviour of the inhabitants of Revolutionary Road and any other street, lane, drive or alley of Connecticut. Mendes has no patience. Instead of allocating time for this to build up to almost agonising levels, he takes the lazy and novel route: flashbacks.
This is the fatal flaw of the film, to assign different versions of Frank and April Wheeler and try to rope us in with false visions of regret. The opening is warm and cosy, the two glamorous leads meet cute and are instantly blubbering on about their various dreams and aspirations (and later whistle and frolic on the lawn after their big decision). And then throughout the film we pull back to when they were younger and feistier and had ambition they can barely recall today. This of course goes against everything that Yates stood for - he wanted the Wheelers to break free from the monotonous conformity of their surroundings, not be designated as special, shiny snowflakes that are held back by those around them. What this results in is the film going down entirely the wrong path, wherein the fault is not within themselves but rather a vague aspect of luck and destiny dealing them a less than completely satisfactory card that eradicates their potential. Mendes can't even delivery fully on that front; the film strains to convince us that Frank is really the 'fine mind' that has been wasted in corporate, although this may just be a delusion of April's.
Winslet is more than capable of playing such a frightened and boxed- in mother and wife; her body is in an ever-bowed position, fretting and rising just enough to put on a weak smile, all the while hiding her quiet desperation and intentions behind it. It is unfortunate that the editing lays her out to dry by needlessly forcing comparison with the past version of April, the graceful and straight-postured aspiring actress. DiCaprio explodes externally as necessary, although the writing betrays his character by portraying his affair as something borne of his natural charm and debonair (we've seen this before, in Catch Me If You Can, Wolf of Wall Street, and so on) rather than an inevitability of the setting. And Michael Shannon is a fine actor wasted in a hokey role (or dramatic device) that bears the ridiculous implication that only the disabled could see through the farce of the suburban American dream, although Yates must bear some of this blame for this.
If there is an inspired moment of change it is something that does not happen until we are well acquainted with Frank and April Wheeler. After a big fight they run off to their respective corners; April the home and Frank the hotel room. It is only after Frank stumbles into that kitchen that I remembered they had two little girls also living with them; so magnified is their desperation and their insecurities within their egos that it effectively pushes their daughters out of the picture. The moment is such a damning reveal of their selfishness, and the lengths of their blind devotion to the Paris dream that all other responsibilities, most importantly parental, are completely forgotten.