Revolutionary Road

This is definitely not a date movie.

In an ingenious casting move, Titanic lovers Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are reunited, but this time they’re falling out of love. And it’s not a pretty spiral downward.

Frank and April Wheeler (DiCaprio and Winslet) move into a quaint house in a Connecticut suburb with their two children. They live among local suburbanites trapped by their own lives, but the Wheelers believe they won’t get stuck in the rut too. However, work and infidelity eat away at their marriage until the two realize they’ve become another victim of middle class melancholy. Realizing that they have to make a change, the couple plans to move to Paris not to escape their lives, but to start living them. But when April becomes pregnant and Frank is offered a promotion the two are forced to rethink things.

Revolutionary Road depicts what happens when people realize they’ve settled. The film makes it easy to see how this kind of marital misery could have been widespread in the 50s and today for that matter. The film has solid directing and a great script based on the book by Richard Yates. But the acting between the two leads is where the film really succeeds. The scenes where Frank and April argue are downright acidic. They feel true to life and are sometimes painful to watch.

The film works as more than a narrative about its leads and becomes a pessimistic tableau of marriage and modern life in America. If you’re ready to walk away thoroughly depressed, this is one road worth going down.

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