Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

Revolutionary Road
2008
****
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Richard Easton, Jay O. Sanders, Kathryn Hahn, Kathy Bates

It's 1955 and April and Frank Wheeler are a well-to-do couple who feel they have resigned from life since they had children and settled into middle class mediocrity in the Connecticut suburbs. April devices a plan which allows them to move to Paris and reclaim their happiness, but reality inevitably intervenes. Sam Mendes' drama is powerful but it cannot quite do justice to the subtleties in Richard Yates' superb 1961 novel, especially in its depiction of the provocative truth-teller played by Michael Shannon or the breakdown of the marriage, which was built on romantic illusions. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are both excellent, reunite on screen eleven years after Titanic. Is this what would've eventually happened to Jack and Rose's fanciful romance had they both survived the iceberg?