DiCaprio and Winslet at the top of their careers makes for a standout film

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2009)

It's amazing to see where Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have gone since "Titanic" and it should only be fitting that they reunite in a film the demonstrates the full extent of their talents. The wide range of emotion, the external and internal struggles--without them, this film would certainly flop into obscurity, even in the hands of the talented Sam Mendes ("American Beauty"). "Revolutionary Road" as a script doesn't carry enough strength. It's dialog-heavy and even melodramatic at times, even if much of that dialog is responsible for adding most of the film's depth. But DiCaprio and Winslet are so commanding and convincing that you're taken by their story and Mendes brings the best out of both of them.
The timeless duo play Frank and April Wheeler, two suburbanites in the 1950s who have bought into the American ideals of the era despite their every inclination not to. Frank works a job he can't stand, April wishes she could be an actress. The film is the typical suburban conundrum: a contemporary-minded couple desire to grab life by the horns in a time where responsibility, family, practicality and self-sacrifice are the highest of values. Frank and April each wrestle with this in their own ways and it results in a lot of highs and lows for their relationship in the film.
Winslet is amazing as usual. Her inner-monologue is about the strongest of any actress in Hollywood. How she can communicate personal conflict and emotion to the audience with her expressions is astounding and in a film where she plays a woman who feels one way but is pressured to behave another, she really gets to shine. She is beautiful, enticing and tragic at different points and then all at once.
DiCaprio achieves the same effect in his own unique way. He's always been able to portray a roller coaster of emotion and playing a man who is sensitive, a bit neurotic, but also quick to defend his manhood, he has to convincingly change his emotion. He succeeds and he has to, because Frank does this a lot. His most striking strength in this film is the sensitive side in the calms after he fights with April. It's chilling how real it feels from him.
But as talented as these actors are, the parts are highly demanding. They fight, a lot, and about the same stuff, over and over again. Toward the end, their fights elicit laughter from the audience because of how over-the-top the two are forced to react to each other's piercing insults as they fly off the handle. The film needed more external stimulus of conflict, not conflict stimulated mostly by characters' thoughts. There's only so many beautiful angles and close-ups of faces that Mendes can do with a camera to maintain interest. Perhaps the point is that the Wheeler's drive themselves insane due to the nothingness that surrounds them, but films need more than that to engage us sometimes. They rarely interact with their children in the film, which would seem imperative to understanding part of their sacrifice, for example, and it would give them so much more to actually do.
The film is quite tragic, but certainly relatable. Whether its fighting with a spouse or the feeling that you're going to let life slip away because you've chosen a certain lifestyle. There's plenty of time during the film for reflection as you evaluate the arguments and decisions and decide for yourself whether they are settling or need some change.
One standout character is a man recently let of of a mental institution that the Wheelers meet as a favor to a their realtor (Kathy Bates). It's the realtor's adult son, played by Michael Shannon, who provides the film's irony--he sees the Wheelers twice, affirming their choice to make a change at first and exposing their flaws the second, digging at the contradictory roots of the film's two-faced subject matter. Shannon steals his scenes with both self-deprecating humor and by delivering his poignant lines with great strength. Why is he noteworthy in a cast with such incredible talent? Because his scenes are so refreshing in a film that is so densely wrapped up in conversation with itself, that relies on riding the coat tails of the intense emotion depicted by its characters. "Revolutionary Road" is nothing short of thought-provoking, it just needs to more energy and a grander purpose and that's something two of today's best actors can't entirely remedy though boy do they come close.