Yesterday Night(ie. on 18th Feb 2009) I was watching this movie on a DVD, "Revolutionary Road".Actually I wanted to watch this film as I love both the actor and actress in it, Mr. Leonardo and Kate(the famous titanic pair).
This movie deals with marital boredom, individual ambitions, their lifestyle, status and frustrations.Its good to watch at-least once, may be on a lazy Sunday afternoon or so.Brilliantly directed by Sam Mendes which is based on a novel written by Richard Yates’s "Revolutionary Road".
The book is set in 1955 and describes the breakdown of the seven-year marriage between Frank and April Wheeler, a middle-class couple approaching 30, living with their two small children in the Revolutionary Road Estates, a housing development in Connecticut inhabited largely by well-heeled commuters working in Manhattan.
A brilliant screenplay by Justin Haythe, is beautifully crafted, with excellent costumes(Albert Wolsky) and cinematography(Roger Deakins) which convincingly re-create the era. There are nifty hats everywhere - on the crowded platform as the husbands wait for their train to work, then bobbing down the staircases of Grand Central Station as the organisation men head for their offices. Just like we can think of in Churchgate or a VT(CST) station(Mumbai).
The couple’s frustration is evident from the start, with an explosive row driving home after a local amateur dramatic performance starring April has gone hopelessly wrong. It is evident that they hate each other, and everything thereafter is a cover-up.
The handsome Frank(Leonardo DiCaprio), who’s working discontentedly for Knox Business Machines, "at what he liked to call’the dullest job you can possibly imagine’"(their newest machine could "perform the lifetime work of a man with a desk calculator in thirty minutes"). Its the same company with which his father spent 30 years.
His wife, April(Kate Winslet), once had ambitions to be an actress. She now feels stranded out in the split-level house with its picture window she once loved. Like most people around them, they drink too much, smoke incessantly(socially, to counter anxiety) and drift into casual adultery.
April, restless at home with their two children, formulates an escape plan, the family should emigrate to Paris "for good", though she has never been and Frank spent only three days there with the American army at the end of the war. She plans to work as a secretary at Nato and support the family; Frank will find himself a job soon after that, as job for frank was unsure in Paris.
Frank soon gets cold feet. The offer of promotion and an enticingly luxurious corporate life prove irresistible. April, however, is hooked on to her dream, but tragedy lies ahead. They cannot confront their real problems, and neither can stand the accusatory words of the mentally disturbed John(an classic performance from Michael Shannon), the brilliant, intellectual son of middle-aged neighbors, a brutal truth-teller.
DiCaprio and Winslet look right, and they handle well their angry scenes from a marriage. MOvie is bit slow in the first half but catches up in the mid portion. I loved the movie but it all depends on others mood and which movie they would prefer to watch at that given time.but I recommend this movie atleast worth once a watch.