Suburban Screamfest
And I thought I hated the suburbs.
When the dust settled on World War II, and the great cities that had been proudly erected at the outset of the 20th century started to rapidly decline due to bitter neglect, returning veterans and upwardly mobile professionals left those metropolises for the serenity of planned suburban subdivisions. They sprouted up in such locales as Levittown, New York, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Silver Spring, Maryland, Quincy, Massachusetts, Wheaton, Illinois, and Pasadena, California. What no one counted on was the ascendancy of a newly formed suburban culture onto itself, one with its own distinct dynamics, code of ethics, and preconceived notions of respectability.
Into that fray, enter a couple who hadn’t planned on any of the unpredictable behavioral modes of such unmarked territories: the Wheelers of Connecticut, who have ostensibly left New York for the greener pastures of Revolutionary Road in an unnamed town within a train ride of the city. Not only did these unfulfilled folks not expect any of the new norms to which they ought to have adjusted, they are each simultaneously hitting a premature mid-life crisis in their very early
30s.
Color Leonardo DiCaprio’s Frank as one of the lost souls stranded in his circumstance, a WWII veteran who alludes to but does not extensively comment on a war which silently devastated its returnees. But make no mistake: his wife April – in another effective turn by Kate Winslet – is equally dissatisfied and has hatched a plan that must have a better chance than the retreat to suburbia which has afforded her a life too quiet too soon. Her idea is to move to Paris so that she can work in a secretarial capacity while Frank finds his true calling, whatever that may become. Somewhat intentionally, the Wheeler’s plan is vague at best and called out as such by Frank’s co-workers and their dumbfounded friends, neighbors, and realtor, who seemingly all love 1955 suburbia and find no faults whatsoever with it.
In fact, the only person on the Wheeler’s side, and one who wholly comprehends the inherent emptiness of life in that spot between city and country, is a furloughed mental patient, the realtor’s troubled son brought to the Wheelers’ obviously stable home as a guest so that he may exorcise some of his demons. In that role, Michael Shannon tells the only truths in the entire film, a subversive poke at the belly of the suburbs, while the Wheelers cannot overcome their life circumstances to fully buy into their own plan.
Derailed by unintentional developments at home and in work, the Wheelers are divided in their adoption of the plan and all manners of loud arguments ensue, each spouse voicing equal displeasure with what life has brought them but unable to find common ground in their plight. Should there have been some manner of weaponry introduced, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD’s third act could have transformed it into a horror movie, but in lieu of a gun or knife, the only weapons left on the table are the unsettling choices that the characters make when reconciliation seems impossible. If director Sam Mendes wishes us to identify with anyone in this stagey and wordy film, it might in the end be the character whose padded cell might be a healthy alternative to a house on Revolutionary Road in the period before America’s own cultural revolution.
