It's usually a good thing when I fiinish watching a movie and am conflicted over how I felt about it. I appreciate when a movie sits with me. This is the feeling that I wanted to feel after seeing "Doubt," but didn't.
And yet as I sit here feeling it after seeing REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, I am not as satisfied as usual. I can't decide whether I like it or not. And while my rating here is average, I might be rating it too high...I'm still not sure.
Here's my problem: On the one hand, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is skillfully (if a little clinically) directed and finely acted. As a matter of fact, this might even be the film to get me over an unfounded distaste for Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor I pretend to dislike but then am always impressed by. I am going to say right here that this is the best work of his career. In fact, it's probably not even close. And Kate Winslet, as always, is so excellent that we take her for granted. You get the feeling that a number of actresses could have pulled off her role, and maybe they could. But Winslet does this stuff so well.
And that leads to the downsides of the film. Winslet recently appeared in "Little Children," playing essentially the same type of character, but set in the present day vapidity of suburbia rather than the 1950s equivalent. And I think "Little Children" was a much better film.
Director Sam Mendes also, I think, did better with with "American Beauty," which is also a very close sibling to this film. Maybe the fact that much has been filmed about suburban ennui and materialstic "grass-is-greener" restlessness lately and it is starting to feel like deja vu. And when you get this feeling, you have a harder time feeling sympathy for Frank and April Wheeler.
At first I couldn't understand why I had a hard time struggling to appreciate what the Wheelers were going through. I'd be lying if I said I couldn't relate at all to their feeling of suburban entrapment and the concept that we only do what we feel we're supposed to do and never really figure out what we truly want. But the problem, and maybe the film's true flaw, is in a screenplay that doesn't give us any backstory on the couple. They are miserable from the moment we first see them. And you just want to yell at the screen: "Why don't you just get a divorce?"
The film's tragic end was something I predicted 30 minutes before it happened. And I left feeling pathetic about myself even, wondering why I ever feel similar feelings because if this is how I'm going to turn out some day, then just shoot me now!
In the end, DiCaprio's work leaves me with a "more favorable than not" feeling about REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, a film that was most likely in no other way revolutionary.
2.5 out of 4
And yet as I sit here feeling it after seeing REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, I am not as satisfied as usual. I can't decide whether I like it or not. And while my rating here is average, I might be rating it too high...I'm still not sure.
Here's my problem: On the one hand, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is skillfully (if a little clinically) directed and finely acted. As a matter of fact, this might even be the film to get me over an unfounded distaste for Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor I pretend to dislike but then am always impressed by. I am going to say right here that this is the best work of his career. In fact, it's probably not even close. And Kate Winslet, as always, is so excellent that we take her for granted. You get the feeling that a number of actresses could have pulled off her role, and maybe they could. But Winslet does this stuff so well.
And that leads to the downsides of the film. Winslet recently appeared in "Little Children," playing essentially the same type of character, but set in the present day vapidity of suburbia rather than the 1950s equivalent. And I think "Little Children" was a much better film.
Director Sam Mendes also, I think, did better with with "American Beauty," which is also a very close sibling to this film. Maybe the fact that much has been filmed about suburban ennui and materialstic "grass-is-greener" restlessness lately and it is starting to feel like deja vu. And when you get this feeling, you have a harder time feeling sympathy for Frank and April Wheeler.
At first I couldn't understand why I had a hard time struggling to appreciate what the Wheelers were going through. I'd be lying if I said I couldn't relate at all to their feeling of suburban entrapment and the concept that we only do what we feel we're supposed to do and never really figure out what we truly want. But the problem, and maybe the film's true flaw, is in a screenplay that doesn't give us any backstory on the couple. They are miserable from the moment we first see them. And you just want to yell at the screen: "Why don't you just get a divorce?"
The film's tragic end was something I predicted 30 minutes before it happened. And I left feeling pathetic about myself even, wondering why I ever feel similar feelings because if this is how I'm going to turn out some day, then just shoot me now!
In the end, DiCaprio's work leaves me with a "more favorable than not" feeling about REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, a film that was most likely in no other way revolutionary.
2.5 out of 4
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