Totally enthralling and painfully realistic drama

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2009)

This drama is so well made and both Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet are so exceptionally good in their dramatic interpretation that I often forgot I was watching a movie. Leonardo di Caprio really excels and you cannot avoid empathizing with his character.
The director of American beauty does another brilliant job at depicting the frustration of leading an ordinary existence and the devastating consequences that a desperate need to find a way out might lead to. This time though with an emphasis on drama and tragedy; there is no comic relief here to help you hide from the pain. Revolutionary road is a movie that explores the inner struggle of trying to reconcile the dream of doing something extraordinary with our lives with the perspective of inevitably conforming to what everyone else does. In the second part of the story all the way to the ending an ominous thriller-type atmosphere bleeds into the drama and by then you are totally enveloped in the character's lives, anxiously waiting to find out how they will end up.
This part might contain spoilers:
After the inebriation of finding each other, getting married and having children, husband and wife find themselves becoming the ordinary people they had promised themselves never to become. Leonardo di Caprio's character is an intelligent and imaginative man who has a job he hates and Kate Winslet's character is an actress turned housewife, suffocating at the idea that their dreams may have been lost forever in their middle class existence. In an attempt to escape the hopeless emptiness they feel closing in on them, she suggests a drastic change. They decide to throw caution to the wind and take off to start a new life in Paris, where people "really live". Their plan injects new energy into their relationship and into their dreams but the euphoria is short-lived, as life takes a series of twists that will change their future for ever.