Film File - Revolutionary Road

Adapted from the landmark novel by Richard Yates, this film is an incisive portrait of an American marriage seen through the eyes of Frank (Leonardo Di Caprio) and April (Kate Winslet) Wheeler. Yates" story of 1950s America poses a question that has been reverberating through modern relationships ever since: can two people break away from the ordinary without breaking apart? Frank and April have always seen themselves as special, different, ready and willing to live their lives based on higher ideals. So, as soon as they move into their new house on Revolutionary Road, they proudly declare their independence from the suburban inertia that surrounds them and determine never to be trapped by the social confines of their era. Yet, for all their charm and irreverence, the Wheelers find themselves becoming exactly what they didn"t expect: a good man with a routine job whose nerve has gone missing - and a less-than-happy homemaker starving for fulfilment and passion. In short, an American family grappling with the reality of its lost dreams. Driven to change their fates, April hatches an audacious plan to start all over again, to leave the comforts of Connecticut behind for the great unknown of Paris. But when the plan is put in motion, each spouse is pushed to extremes - one to escape whatever the cost, the other to save all that they have, no matter what the compromises. While the book was widely regarded as being anti-suburban, Yates, who died in 1992, said: 'I meant it more as an indictment of a general lust for conformity, I meant to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the 1950s.' The novel would go on to quietly become one of the most influential books of the century. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Ford says it became like a 'secret handshake' among writers - a shared knowledge that this was one of those rare, truly eye-opening American novels every author wishes they might pen. Tennessee Williams called it 'immediately, intensely and brilliantly alive. If more is needed to make a masterpiece of modern American fiction, I am sure I don"t know what it is.' Kurt Vonnegut dubbed the novel 'the Great Gatsby of my time'. Since its initial publication, a variety of filmmakers, including John Frankenheimer, flirted with adapting the book, but no viable screenplay ever came to pass. Having sold the rights to Hollywood shortly after the book"s publication, Yates spent the rest of his life trying to buy them back, to no avail. Since its release, the film has already made many critics" 'best of" list for the first month of 2009. Capturing the timeless trials of an unhappy marriage, its period placement in the 1950s is faithfully recreated through the theme of dilution of ideals and dreams under the weight of compromise and conformity. Sometimes compared to the hit TV series 'Mad Men", which is set in an early '60s period, 'Revolutionary Road" is squarely a 1955 vehicle, a time when Eisenhower still held the White House and Chubby Checker was still ahead of Elvis in the charts. Having last seen Leo and Kate on the prow of the Titanic, this is a perfect all-grown-up environment for them: two individuals who"ve traded their ambitions for an unhappy life they can"t seem to shake. DiCaprio is very convincing as the young man who wants to be a big shot, and Winslett is superb as the young woman vainly trying to buck the traces of her gilded existence in the "burbs. If you liked 'American Beauty" some years back, you"ll love this.