masterful adaptation

Rating: 9/10 (31 December 2008)

Kate Winslet again proves she can play suburban American housewives. LITTLE CHILDREN would have been enough, but granted, she reaches impressive heights as an intelligent but emotionally insecure young woman with bohemian tendencies who sees herself trapped in a stifling suburbia in this exploration of the dark side of the American dream. Almost as effective is Leonardo DiCaprio as her similarly dissatisfied office worker husband. Supporting player Michael Shannon is electrifying as John Givings, an eerily perceptive mental patient who upsets their fragile sense of equilibrium at a tense point in the drama. Kathy Bates plays Shannon's mother, a real estate agent/neighbor but seems to be retreading the character she played in ABOUT SCHMIDT several years back: friendly, loquacious, somewhat overbearing and very strange.
As he did in the highly overrated American BEAUTY and the flawed but under-appreciated ROAD TO PERDITION, British director Sam Mendes handles American material with style and steadiness. He has a well thought out sense of shot composition; the climactic scene (the details of which I will not divulge) with Winslet standing in front of her picture window is a case in point. Justin Haythe's screenplay persuasively retains the essence of the Richard Yates novel about people who don't know who they are, hook up in what they think or hope is true love and come to hate each other. The actors tear into their roles vigorously. There are many powerful moments and very few dull ones. Winslet and DeCaprio give it all they've got.
Among the layers excised from the novel is the emotional suffering of the Winslet-DiCaprio couple's children. In olden days most movies conveniently sent the children off to play, off to bed, off with a nanny after giving us an idyllic glimpse of them in order to establish the parenthood of the central adult dramatic personae. Few films ever convincingly integrated the messy realities of raising real children into their plots or dramatic situations. The same thing happens here. Just one nugget from the novel illustrating the harm done to the children would have strengthened the overall presentation.
By and large, however, this is a masterful adaptation.