intense, raw, painful and brutally honest

Rating: 9/10 (2 March 2009)

Frank: I have the backbone not to run away from my responsibilities! April: It takes backbone to lead the life you want!
Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) works for the first time with his wife Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road, a heavy drama based on Richard Yates' novel. It also reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Winslet since 1997's Titanic.
Frank (DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Winslet) seem to live the perfect life with their two kids in a Connecticut suburb in the mid-1950s. Frank has a job he doesn't like but is good at, while April put her acting dreams on hold to become a full-time housewife. But they feel trapped and unhappy and feel like there is a better life than what they have. Then April hatches the perfect plan: the Wheelers will start over in Paris, the only place she remembers her husband saying was worth returning to, where people felt most alive. No job awaits Frank there, in fact, he has no idea what he will do, but he will finally have the time to find out. April volunteers to support the family by applying for a good-paying secretarial job. They announce their plan to the world, but when they begin execution, complications ensue, values are tested, and the couple discovers so much more about each other that will forever change their future.
Revolutionary Road is intense, raw, painful and brutally honest. It has been called a humorless American Beauty, but it's so much more. It may be set in the '50s, but its message continues to speak to anyone in a relationship today. Technically, while the performances were terrific, it sometimes felt like the characters were mouthpieces on a tableau, as if in a play. But that itch aside, Revolutionary Road resonated with me, being in a relationship and having had the same thoughts as the characters. When April says, "I saw a whole other future. I can't stop seeing it," you feel her desire and grief. You will also feel Frank's helplessness even in his volatile explosions. Even in their many conversations and yelling sprees, one might think that at least the couple communicates and are honest with each other. But in the end, there is a scene that at first confused me, but later on I realized its importance: how a couple lasts by showing how the other copes. It was a simple but powerful scene, perhaps depressing but real nonetheless.