Revolutionary Road (2008) -

A pretty pretty postcard of marital misery. The film tells the story of "The Wheelers" -- a "special" couple living in suburban New York. Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio in a sincere performance that once again demonstrates his limits in playing period style) is an in-house copywriter for a nondescript firm. April (Kate Winslet, luminous as always in a performance that demonstrates none of the actress's capacity to subtly plumb unforeseen depths) is a stay-at-home mom who studied acting back in the day. As the film begins, Rick's on the precipice of his 30th birthday as April's reeling from the humiliation of being reduced to performing in an especially bad community theatre production. The coincidence of these challenges to their respective self-esteem occasions a crisis of faith for each partner's confidence in themselves and in their shared marriage. Rick reacts by instigating a predatory affair with a girl in the typing pool (Zoe Kazan, captivating in a throwaway part); April reacts by concocting a scheme to sell everything and move to Paris, where she can work and he can begin to find himself. Both Rick and April get completely hopped up on this fantasy and their love seems to be reanimated. As they spin this new fantasy future, those around them react variously. The dissipated, sissy-ish man who shares Rick's cubicle (Dylan Baker, in a quite thrilling performance -- I wanted to follow him into his own movie) observes with bemused cynicism. The Wheelers's neighbor pals The Campbells react with shock, with Milly (Kathryn Hahn, vivid and utterly human) reacting in frightened terror and Shep (David Harbour, in perhaps the film's most dimensional performance, responding with a melancholy fury). Of course, Rick and April's grand plans are patently unrealistic and they are humbled soon, in the most gendered of terms. Rick is offered a promotion at work and April discovers that she's pregnant. The threat to their shared plans (and private fantasies) posed by this pair of realizations causes their relationship to spiral deeper into the despair from which their Paris fantasy had briefly lifted it. Then it all really goes to hell. Rick takes up again with the girl from the typing pool; April has a cruel fling with Shep. A disastrous dinner with a mentally unbalanced guest compels a new kind of clarity for both Rick and April and, the next day, Rick starts his new job and April attempts to induce her own miscarriage (with devastating results). The problem with the film is one of tone. Director Sam Mendes plays the sincerity of the scenario, which only amplifies the shrillness of each character's shallow self-obsessiveness, without a clarifying frame. (I liked it better when Winslet played this same character arc in Little Children two cycles ago.) Winslet and DiCaprio spend a good deal of the film shrieking at each other, in ways that were likely quite challenging (and gratifying) as actors but do little to illuminate the characters of Rick and April. Michael Shannon does is feral force of nature thing as the mentally unstable son of The Wheelers's realtor (Kathy Bates, in an almost really good performance). As an intellectual currently undergoing electro-shock therapy at a nearyby loony bin, Shannon's character is poised to be the "speaker of truth" -- the one citizen capable of calling out that the emperor has no clothes. He seems at first to understand Rick and April's impulse to flee their perfect life; then, he calls each out for their cruel hypocrisies in not following through. He's patently a device -- like Mrs. Miller in Doubt -- who arrives to throw a monkey-wrench into things and thus amplify the tension for the last act. Shannon is good, but obvious, in the role. Ultimately - SPOILER ALERT - the film concludes with April dying as a result of her self-induced miscarriage/abortion; Rick leaving the community; and the neighbors left to sift through their own ambivalences about the "special" Wheelers. The narrative scenario is deeply cynical, ostensibly a satire on the conventions of self compromise that characterized post-WWII American middle-class privilege. The tragedy of Rick and April is borne of the fact that neither believes in anything, only their shared "idea" that they were "special" -- that Rick was "above" his job and that April was so much more than "just a housewife." I knew I was doomed when Rick and April shared the moments they knew they were alive: Rick's being the moment he marched to battle in France and April's the first time she had sex with Rick. This hollow fantasy of Rick as superman is the shared illusion that collapses on top of both characters, and it's at the root of the film's/narrative's most compelling critique: choosing to believe in the fantasy (of a future in Paris; of happiness in the suburbs; of how "special" The Wheelers are; of the importance of maintaining polite appearances) will be the source of one's devastation, if not one's doom. I actually quite like that premise. However, this film -- for whatever reason -- elides that tension in a curiously self-gratified indulgence in the intensity of each moment as it comes. Instead of this being a devastating satire of middle-class self-deception, the film becomes a meticulous dissection of the petty cruelties animating an unhappy marriage. Neither as intricately crafted as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf nor as emotionally stark as Scenes from a Marriage, this film feels stunty and intellectually lazy. Really good actors get lost in their roles (Winslet, DiCaprio, Bates) while smaller roles shine (Shannon, Baker, Kazan) because of their relative clarity. Only David Harbour seems able to maneuver the three tracks necessary -- tracks that are (aptly enough perhaps) easiest described in the most simplistic psychoanalytic terms (id, superego, ego). Harbour (and to a lesser extent Bates) provide a really palpable sense of the pressure of the "rules" of proper behavior (superego), and Harbour also really taps into this guy's competing/conflicting desires (id). As a result, Harbour really is able to play -- in every scene -- the real conflict Shep feels as he tries to negotiate between his desires and his sense of obligation/duty. It's a dynamic, surprising, humane, and complex performance. I wish Harbour's subtle complexity had been matched by the other principal players. Alas. Everyone else gets too lost in id or too gummed up in superego and it's just tiresome. But the part that really pissed me off? How this film's depiction of a historical subculture (white suburbia at midcentury) characterized by rank, chauvinistic misogyny ended up as a replication of that misogyny rather than a lucid critique of it. The film's concluding moments are especially outrageous. As folks deal with the aftershocks of April's suicide-by-self-induced-abortion, the "blame the woman" aspects of this story really fly. In each of the concluding scenes (Rick on a playground, Shep meeting the couple who have just moved into the Wheelers old house, Mr. Givings as he turns down the volume of his hearing aid as his wife natters on), our sympathy is ostensibly invested with the men. And the only woman who isn't the "cause" of the man's discomfort? Milly -- the perfect housewife who does and says exactly as her husband asks and who believes in the principles of middle-class suburbia as social gospel. It's an appalling moment really: as we're asked to absorb the tragedy of April's death the reason for these men and their current unhappiness. Indeed, I left the film thinking less of Kate Winslet for having bought into this tacit misogyny -- I was so infuriated by the film and its bizarre resolution. We are offered these scenes as simple depictions of the characters's realities and it all points back to April: if she hadn't been so selfish, so unrealistic, so grandiose, none of his would have had to happen. It's a despicable conclusion, one that reveals not the satire, not the historical commentary, not the idea that things were so bad then...just that women are to blame for men's unhappiness and discontent. If only they could all be like Milly... Ack. Feh. Gah. Whatever.