12/01/2021
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD - A write-up by Megha Chaudhary
When one feels suffocated with the present scenario of their lives, one has this potent desire to escape the landscape they are familiar to, a landscape which once was ideal now appearing jaded. The Revolutionary Road is one such film that has captured the moments of man's inability to digest and process when life decides to go astray but mentally. The suffocation they go through is purely mental if not, sometimes or mostly, aided by physical changes in their surroundings. Frank and April are happily married. They are the youngest couple on the block, have two daughters, and are pretty much thriving financially. The movie is set in the Americas of the 1950s where technology was just beginning to birth amidst the social changes occurring worldwide. Frank is played by Leonardo DiCaprio and April is played by Kate Winslet. Frank works in a company where he is frustrated by his peers but tries to appear cool and calm on the outside. He's fed up of the same boring routine he has to go through every day in order to earn bread for his family. April is a housewife, cleaning, washing, cooking, trying to fit in the role of a perfect housewife when her mind gnaws on her insides. She wants to escape the mundane lifestyle they have been accustomed to after they got married. She comes up with a plan and tries for a job in the American Embassy in France. Eventually she just wants to shift to France, being the sole breadwinner, whereas Frank can be a freelancer and be with the kids. All this seems illusionary until this illusion grasps April's mind quite strongly. On the other hand, the film opens up quite surprisingly. We have a scene where April and Frank are on their way back home and a fight erupts between the duo. They both blame one another, being the reason of each other's unhappiness until they have to eventually slow down and be silent. This is also the scene where Frank appears to be slapping April but only to hit the car. He doesn't raise a finger on her but the flinch portrayed by Kate Winslet in the shoes of April is appreciation worthy. The chemistry between the actors is crazy good. Cut to the middle, we see Frank cheating on April by sleeping with a woman who just joined his company. She's also married. Frank feels guilty but doesn't come clean until the climax begins to creep close as the viewers anticipate the ending of the movie.
In a world like today, where real love is highly prized and is said to be hard to find, April and Frank appear to us as this modern duo who are perfect for one another but not as individual. They are harmful in their tendencies, by the way, they behave when pressure kicks in and their mind starts reeling. The wisest character in the movie is John Givings, played by, Michael Shannon who is the mental kid of a woman who's April and Frank's neighbor. John is thirty years old, PhD in mathematics but yet mental. There's a scene where Frank is mad by the words spat out by John when he makes an observation. April is unbothered and lights a cigarette. We don't just have Frank cheating. We also see April cheating with her neighbor, Shep Campbell, when Frank goes off to drop Shep's wife. The circle becomes complete and as viewers, we don't know who to root for. For Frank or for April? Or for both? Or nobody?
They do make up for the constant fights they have by having s*x on their kitchen counter. Soon April discovers that she's pregnant and Frank is the happiest we have seen in the whole movie in this scene. But April is not. She has harbored dreams of moving abroad but not with a baby in her tummy. Frank has no idea how April tries to terminate her pregnancy. There appears a scene that gives a clean rise to the climax where they fight, break things, and April hides in the forest. Frank is guilty and drinks up to his bones. When April arrives, he is sorry and both are silent. The next day when Frank leaves for office and kisses April goodbye, we know who to root for. No one. April tries to terminate her own pregnancy which leaves her being hospitalized. She ultimately dies and we see Frank in the end score, in a park, playing with their two daughters.
The movie is brilliantly shot, has a story that is very valuable in the so-called marketed value of living an American Dream, and makes us realize that nothing is to be taken for granted, even the breaths we take every second.
