At the home cinema

On Saturday, we watched Revolutionary Road. I checked this out with trepidation from the library. I knew it was about a troubled marriage, but I was so thrilled to find a new release I couldn't resist, even though Leonardo DiCaprio irks me. (Why couldn't they have cast James McEvoy?)

We even debated watching it, but Dan checked out the Bishops review, and since they didn't give it an O, although they warned about "excessive smoking," we popped it in.

This is no heartstring tugger. Rather, a stomach churner.

But we watched it all the way through, and when it was over questioned whether we had just wasted 2 hours. But over gin and seltzers (influenced by all the martinis consumed in the film), we talked ourselves into believing it was less of a narrative and more of a parable about self-destruction with a backwards message of redemption.

Short Summary: The characterization is flat: Kate and Leonardo (April and Frank Wheeler) fall in love quickly. She wants to be an actress, and he's a longboatman, trying to avoid being an officeman like his father. But she finds him fascinating (first clue.) Plotline is thinly developed: After they get married, get pregnant, and move to the suburbs where she makes one last, failed attempt at being an actress, life starts to stall. He goes to work with a mass of clones, eventually has a shortlived affair with a secretary, before April decides they really are something special, and so they should run away to Paris to prove it to themselves and everyone else. The emotions are hyperstrung: they blow up at each other for small provocations. Children are rarely present and only as backdrop. They drink and smoke constantly: a sign of dis-ease. And the ending is depressing: April has a home abortion and dies after Frank uses her pregnancy as a reason to cancel on the trip to Paris, when he wants to take a promotion at his hateful place of employment.

It's a tricky movie. For a while you want to sympathize with one or another of the characters. Who hasn't felt they are destined for something important? Who hasn't felt stunted or trapped by their job? Who hasn't thought life would be better only if we lived somewhere more exciting? So the Wheelers are an Everycouple of sorts that buys into the individualistic creed of modern times. They really aren't distinguished by special talents, other than by the extent of their self-absorption. Only the movie's madman thinks they are right to run away to Paris. Although perhaps the tragic ending would seem to confirm the idea that really they should have gone away, but they would have taken their selfishness with them. Frank, with no real gifts, likely wouldn't discover his true vocation and would resent April's work. April would probably run away with some Frenchman. April keeps talking about how she wants Frank to "be a man," but her Parisian plan is emasculating. What Frank really needs is some physical labor to give his life meaning.

Now the ending: Did April's death cause Frank to be more attentive to his kids? Did it cause the neighbor couple to love each other more? Are we supposed to see ourselves in the role of the real estate agent's husband, who turns off his hearing aid so that he doesn't hear his wife's disparaging, self-assured censure of the Wheelers?

So maybe this movie, although dark in the vein of Graham Greene and O'Connor, wasn't completely nihilistic after all, but a portrait of how selfishness leads to self-damnation.