Incredibly depressing film about disillusionment and betrayal

Rating: 4/10 (11 May 2010)

Sam Mendes, who in 2002 made the rather depressing and darkly-lit ROAD TO PERDITION, has now made a really deeply depressing film about people screaming and shouting at each other. Leonardo DiCaprio is so good at all of this vicious behaviour that one hopes it really is acting. The only characters in the entire film who are in any way admirable are the long-suffering wife of DiCaprio, played nobly by Kate Winslet (who is not afraid to do without makeup and look increasingly haggard), and a character who is temporarily on release from an insane asylum (excellently portrayed by Michael Shannon), so that it is no accident of the script that the only truths spoken in this film are those declaimed by a madman. This film is set in the leafy Connecticut suburbs near Long Island Sound (a beach of which we actually see in one scene), where DiCaprio and Winslet are 'the Wheelers', an attractive young couple whom everyone admires. Winslet is admirable, but her oafish and totally vacuous husband is not. For years she does not see this, which makes her very dim indeed! Perhaps I should point out that the title of this film does not refer in any way to any revolution, and this is not a film about Lenin or Castro. Revolutionary Road is merely the ironical name of the deeply boring and non-revolutionary suburban street in which the Wheelers live. Kathy Bates is magnificent in her supporting role as a neighbour, but then when was Kathy Bates not magnificent? There is one sensationally brilliant scene in the film where the disillusioned Winslet sits quietly smoking her cigarette while chaos reigns around her, with other people screaming and shouting like the maniacs they all are, a true eye-of-the-storm moment, carried out impeccably by the imperturbable Winslet and, let's face it, brilliantly directed by Mendes. I hate to say that because I don't like the film, but one must be fair. As so often in reviews of violent films, when I ask 'why did they make this?', I have to pose the question as to why Mendes wasted his time on this subject. OK, so he gets credit for no one getting murdered, and he did not have to wipe blood and gore off his lens. Also, there are no exploding cars, no chases, and the only violence is psychological, though that is as intense as it gets. But there are pointless and seedy sex scenes. The Germans have two words which mean 'to eat'. They are 'essen', which applies to humans, and 'fressen', which describes the eating habits of animals. I would describe the copulating habits of animals as imitated by humans by a new word, also adding an 'r', and call it 'serx'. In this film the supposedly devoted wife Winslet has 'serx' in the car with a neighbour. This scene is either inserted to show her state of despair or just because Mendes likes serx scenes. (There is an earlier serx scene between Winslet and her oaf husband which takes place against a wall of the kitchen, where fortunately no pots or pans were hanging, but although nobody banged against any of those, another type of banging did occur.) I think we might also invent a new verb for having sex, by inserting an 'r' into the one which everyone shouts (as in this film) but which, due to the hypocrisy of human society, no one is permitted to write down, and certainly not in a review like this, which might be read by an underage person of, say, 45, and cause offence. So there is serx and there is oafishness and there is shouting and screaming, and that's about it, really. Certainly something to cheer us all up! Thanks, Sam! What's next? DIARY OF A MADMAN?