False Dichotomies

Revolutionary Road is a horror movie. It’s no coincidence, I think, that the tragic protagonists of the film – Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) – live in a house at the very edge of their suburban anti-idyll, slanted on a hill. They are on the edge of the woods; at one point we see April through the window-pane at twilight, dressed in white, having just returned from roaming wildly through the trees. It is a gorgeous and frightening image, enhanced by the constantly creepy score. This is an “everyday” drama that had me on the edge of my seat, terrified at the inevitable, violent conclusion. A film where the sadness is offset by the importance of the ideas being examined, and how they pertain to every single one of us.

Frank and April are a married couple on the cusp of their thirties, living on Revolutionary Road in a suburb of New York in the 1950s. Frank commutes every day to his job as a glorified salesman in the city. April stays at home, tending to the two young children. They met years earlier, when they were both full of hopes and dreams and visions of the future. Frank had the air of a bohemian revolutionary about him; April harboured ambitions of becoming an actress.

All these hopes came to an end on Revolutionary Road, which is the film’s departure point. Frank and April are caught in a malaise, the malaise, and they do not know how to escape it. Paris, perhaps? Or spontaneous copulation in the kitchen? Maybe if Frank gets a promotion at work everything will be alright? Is love tearing them apart, or were they obviously never meant to be together in the first place. “You’re just some guy who made me laugh at a party once,” April tells him in the midst of one of her violent emotional storms. We are horrified at being able to peek behind the curtains, horrified at the possibility that so much terror can be generated from such banal quarters.

When I saw it, I was the youngest person in the cinema. Around me sat lots of thirty-something couples, perhaps a little like Frank and April, their smugness soon giving way to fear at the unfolding horror. Revolutionary Road is set in a specific place and time, but still resonates strongly for this generation. The malaise remains a definitive feature of post-modern society, where stories like the Wheelers’ are not necessarily aberrations. We can run off to the suburbs, yes, but there is more chance that the gnawing doubts will reach us there. For we are a generation exposed to the terror and futility of choice like no other.

I don’t think I’m ruining anything by letting slip that the Wheelers don’t make it to Paris. I also don’t think I’m going out on a limb by suggesting that it wouldn’t have made a difference if they had. That’s the tragedy of the malaise: you diagnose it as a problem with your job or your location, and you run off to Paris, India, or Zion. But the real problem is an inward one, which means it can only be solved alone. This is why the Wheelers’ problems are compounded – they are stuck in a relationship from which there is no escape. As I mentioned above, some have suggested that they are a couple who are obviously meant to be together. I think this is unfair – couples are no more meant not to be together than they are meant to be together – but it becomes clear soon from the outset that they are going to drag each other down.

This is how the Bloomsbury Belle puts it (she is referring to the book, but the point holds for the film): “Richard Yates pointed out that the book is not so much the overt criticism of suburbia that people saw it as. Perhaps it’s better read, instead, as a critique of the common criticism of suburbia. In other words, as a critique of the common failure to answer to ourselves for our own disappointments, as opposed to displacing them to the situation we find ourselves in. Situation is important too, but I think you have to have the imagination to transform your original surroundings, otherwise there’ll always be some “beyond” you’re hankering for.” The tragedy is that people will walk away from the film and reduce it to its historical context, or to the specifics of the Wheelers’ relationship, or to their failure to seize control of their lives while they still had a chance. There are many ideas in Revolutionary Road, displayed intelligently despite the impending horror; ideas that coagulate as lessons. This is something rare in contemporary cinema, and we would do well to heed them.