Revolutionary Road

When we picked up our tickets for Sam Mendes’ new film ‘Revolutionary Road,’ on Valentine’s night, we were told that the heating was not working in Cinema 15. That should have told us we’d made the wrong choice for a romantic movie! Five minutes into the film, our suspicions were confirmed, as Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio a young married couple from the 1950’s, stood yelling at each other on the edge of a highway somewhere in the suburbs of New York. They were on their way back from an amateur play in which the wife April Wheeler had performed, and it had not been a success. The failure of her play, and the couple’s struggle to talk about it on their way home in the car, summed up the frustration of their suburban life together. It had all seemed so promising when they’d moved into their elegant villa on Revolutionary Road as newly weds, but now several years on, in spite of the arrival of two lovely children, the suffocating existence of clerical work in the City for Frank, and tedious coffee mornings at home for April, had reduced their American Dream to ashes. The message of the film is nothing new, but the excellent script, fine performances, and sensitive direction brings it home afresh with tremendous visceral force. Early on in the script, April sees a raft of hope in this ocean of despair, and grasps at it with all the desperate intensity of a drowning woman. (It was like ‘Titanic’ all over again for these two actors!!) She remembers how Frank had fallen in love with Paris as a young GI in the war, and she wants to escape there now and find a secretarial job. This would allow her husband to take time out from working, and discover what he really wants to do with his life far away from this suffocating society. In those days, especially in their neck of the woods, such a drastic upheaval was virtually unheard of, and the film exploits the comic potential of the neighbour's response as they break the news. After his initial shock, Frank is galvanized by his wife’s plan and it seems that love will triumph over deadening social convention. However, when Frank discovers that April is pregnant, he begins to have doubts, especially when his wife mentions the ‘A’ word. The film strongly implies that this is just the excuse Frank has needed to run away from the challenge of becoming his own man, rather than the social clone he is turning into. This is in fact the dramatic conflict at the heart of the movie. At one point Frank defends his inclination to stay put, by yelling; ‘I have the back-bone not to run away from my responsibilities,’ to which April reposts, ‘it takes back-bone to lead the life you want.’ Kate Winslet brilliantly conveys the struggle for survival of a vital and intelligent woman in a pre-feminist age. She is like one of Ibsen’s tragic heroines, utterly isolated in a world of mindless conformity. Di Caprio likewise captures the pathetic impotence of a man emasculated by consumerism and convention. Around the middle of the film, a wise fool arrives on the scene in the shape of John, the adult son of the Wheeler’s middle-aged neighbours. He is currently in the care of the local psychiatric unit having apparently ‘burnt-out.’ John is a fascinating character and is given some of the best lines in the script, such as the ones he hurls at Frank when he discovers he’s got cold feet about going to Paris because of April’s pregnancy: ‘the only way he can prove he’s got balls is by making babies’ and accuses him of keeping himself comfortable by ‘hiding behind a maternity dress.’

I won’t spoil the film by elaborating further on the plot, but on the way home Rachel and I discussed how hard the film must be to watch, for those who feel they’ve allowed their dreams to be stifled by pursuing other people’s expectations, rather than their own God-given desires. Rachel remarked how the film was aiming to ‘disturb the comfortable,', just as a good sermon should. The ‘feel-good factor’ crudelyinserted in so many films through crass formulaic happy-endings, may do little more than to numb our aching need to come alive, at last. One of April’s neighbours consoles her, when it seems Paris is little more than a fading dream: ‘You just wanted out, I guess,’ he reasons. ‘No, I just wanted in,’ she replies. Sometimes it is a gift to be disturbed, if it stirs and awakens our slumbering spirit. A good film, along with the drama and literature, may do this more effectively than the finest sermon, because it enables us to experience so tangibly the consequences of our actions- albeit vicariously. When we got back to Horsham, we took our places, along with many other couples, at our table for two in a corner of Tortellini’s restaurant. Our romantic evening could begin at last as we scanned the red Valentine’s Day menu! Like the Wheeler’s, like most of the other love-birds around us, we want to be a ‘special couple’ not just another suburban two-some dwindling into middle-aged mediocrity- sapped of vitality and vigour! Others will constantly seek to undermine our attempts to separate ourselves from the pack. As the film suggested, there seems to be a conspiracy among the rest of society to persuade us to settle for empty conformity. However, one line in the film above all the rest should haunt us, should we give in to such delusion: ‘People never forget the truth, they just get better at lying.’ To end this blog with a more positive thought, let me quote from a poem which should inspire us to face the challenge of living the abundant life Christ won for all humanity at Calvary. ‘What will you do with your one, wild, precious life?’

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