An absolute masterpiece.

Rating: 10/10 (24 January 2009)

Sam Mendes' masterpiece Revolutionary Road doesn't take any time to introduce us to it's characters or show us how they met and fell in love. From the very first scene, we know who Frank and April Wheeler are and why they are so tragically unhappy. The Wheelers thought that they were special, somehow superior to the drones of classic suburban America that they began living among. Perhaps it was the realization that they were living such a dull, unimpressive life that made them feel superior, but in the opening stages of the film they slowly realize that they have stopped being outsiders and instead have become just another uninteresting couple in this uninteresting world. To open themselves back up to life and that superiority, April creates a dream fantasy to move to Paris and they both buy into it for as long as they can.
This dream of Paris, however, is just a band-aid for a wound that won't stop bleeding. For a little while they live on a high, basking in the glow that this fantasy has brought them. But soon they realize that they can never escape this disaster of an existence that they accidentally slipped into too long ago for them to even remember what made them so interesting in the first place. Their despondency with life quickly turns into aggressive hatred towards each other as they fall further and further apart in a series of brutal arguments that only get worse and worse. The tragedy of this film, and these characters, is that in the end they don't hate each other. Frank and April Wheeler love each other deeply, but that love is so strong that the only way to distract themselves from a life they never dreamed of living is to turn such a strong emotion into unimaginable hatred towards each other. They are in love and want to be happy together, but everything in their lives succeeds in driving them further and further apart into an ending that shook me to the core.
Of course, when it comes down to it, this tragic tale of suburban misery is an actor's showcase. And boy, what a showcase it is. I've seen a few people express hate for the film and it's performances because they feel that it was all too melodramatic and scenery chewing. But I personally think that's the genius behind these performances. Not because the actors are melodramatic, but because the characters themselves make their own arguments melodramatic and explosive just so that they can feel something. These people are craving for something that they can never have, a kind of life you would see in the movies. And if they can't have a happy life where they travel around Paris having fun, they can at least feel alive in the most tragic way possible by taking out their aggression on each other at every turn. All of the shouting and flailing of the arms, I think that was all in the realism of the characters and their need to shout louder and be more theatric than the other person. They used this explosiveness to establish dominance in the argument and relationship and in that respect, the performances were flawless.
Leonardo DiCaprio has really impressed me a few times this decade, but his performance in this picture makes his past work look like child's play. Hell, he makes the rest of the actors in this piece seem like amateurs. He steals every second of this film with an explosive, emotionally powerful performance that served to devastate, terrify and move me all at the same time. A brutal portrayal of an ultimately sympathetic and tragic character and without a doubt one of the best performances of the year. Even though DiCaprio completely steals the film, that's not to say that the rest of the performances are anything but sensational. Kate Winslet is the perfect match for his talent in the arguments of these characters and each of them provide their own level of internal fear and external explosiveness. Michael Shannon has been an actor who I've admired quite a bit over the past few years, stealing scenes in all of his films while he went unnoticed and underrated by the world at large. Needless to say, when I found out that he had a performance with Oscar buzz in a prestige picture like this (a performance that would eventually earn him an actual Oscar nomination), my expectations were pretty high off the bat. He took those expectations, ran with them, and then shattered anything I could have expected from him. His performance is absolutely frightening and I couldn't be more pleased that his talent is getting recognized all over the place, especially by the Academy themselves. His explosive argument with DiCaprio's character unsettled me in a way that few films ever have, and that was based entirely on the flawless performances from the two actors.