Sad, Pathetic People Doing Sad, Pathetic Things - Revolutionary Road (Movie Review)

A nice, vibrant young couple from the city (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, a.k.a the doomed couple from Titanic) gets married, has a baby and moves to the suburbs to live out the American dream. They get a nice white house, with red shutters and a blue roof. They meet nice people, bring in nice money…and begin the dull, deathly decay towards lifeless existence.
I’m going to tell you something right now – everybody I talk to about this movie hated it, and surprisingly not just because it’s morbidly depressing and incredibly upsetting. They hate the characters, the story, the atmosphere, the movie’s very existence. Are there good performances by talented actors? Sure, but they don’t care because they can’t stand who the actors are playing. Is the 1950s/60s set design done well? Of course, but you can get that on Mad Men, and Mad Men doesn’t suck.
I actually didn’t quite hate this movie, but only because I have such respect for director Sam Mendes. Since bursting onto the scene at the end of the century with American Beauty, Mendes has displayed a knack for the craft, for finding the symbolism in the moment, the excellence in a shot. Stylistically, compositely, he’s one of the very best. What he’s not always good at, apparently, is picking the best story.
Revolutionary Road is the rare film that was doomed before a single scene was ever shot. Why? Because the screenplay (by newcomer Justin Haythe) is simply despicable. I never read Richard Yates’ novel, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume there’s something there worth merit. But if there is, Haythe failed to tap into it. In fact, based on what we have here, he seems to have avoided it.
Because the characters aren’t just hateable, they don’t even seem real. Their aliens, spinning about creating needless problems and ruining their lives all because they can’t shake the feeling that they’re already ruined. They flail about, uncontrollably upset and self-destructive, and incredibly unaware of how horrible they are.
The thematics here are nothing new – it’s your basic quarter-life crisis, with young people realizing that life is finite, and believing they’ve missed their chance to truly live it. But aside from a broad sense of that thematic, there’s no reasoning here for us to understand, no tangible force to push or pull at our characters, or our sympathies. It all just seems so…pathetic.
Maybe that’s the point. I don’t know. I do know the only thing that seems real in this movie is the helplessness of powerless people consumed by a truly horrible yet nonsensical fight. And that frustration is nothing to base a movie on.
Sorry, Mendes. You’ll get ‘em next time, champ.

- The Movie Guy