Revolutionary Road

Hi, this is Chris filling in for Grace. One of the perks of being Grace and having this well-trafficked blog is that you get invited to blogger-only sneak previews and other free events. One of the perks of being Grace’s boyfriend is that when she’s away you get to attend one of these events for her. (There are other perks as well.)

This time Grace was invited to an early screening of Revolutionary Road (opening Dec. 26), starring Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio, and directed by Sam Mendes (who just happens to be Winslet’s husband). The movie is adapted from a 1961 novel of the same title by Richard Yates, a writer well-respected in literary circles for his depictions of suburban emptiness in the fifties, but not widely known outside those circles.

The story is basically this: a young couple get married (possibly because of an unplanned pregnancy) and move to the suburbs. The couple, however, find themselves miserable, suffocated by the empty conformity they’ve come to embody. The two thus end up tearing at each other until we get to a tragic ending.

So was the movie any good? I really enjoyed Michael Shannon, who plays an acquaintance of the Leo-Kate couple on break from a mental institution and who has no filter between what he thinks and what he says. He kills in both of the scenes he is in, and he’s alone almost worth it.

On the other hand, I found most of the movie to be just relentlessly, relentlessly bleak. It would’ve been nice if the movie was a bit more subtle, perhaps gradually revealing how a once-good marriage fell apart and maybe offering some counterbalancing notes suggesting that there is possibly something actually appealing in the gentleness of living outside the city limits. Instead the suburbs represent just “hopeless emptiness,” and it’s clear the Kate-Leo couple hate each other from the minute the film starts rolling. Hey, I hate suburbia and conformity as much as anyone else, but depicting things in such a lop-sided manner only undermines whatever underlying notes of truth the movie may have.

But anyway… come back in a few days for more Grace and more food blogging!