comment #1

George Prager says ...

For most people, an evening at the movies is like a trip to Pottery Barn. If a movie doesn't enhance their lifestyle they resent it.

comment #2

bluetide says ...

It's not the martial trauma that made the movie terrible to me; it was a) the total lack of innovation onscreen as the movie made sure to include every domestic melodrama cliche imaginable, and b) the lack of context for the neverending series of shouting matches. It never convincingly made us understand why these two people believed so strongly that they were a different kind of couple. What made them so special that they believed they could make it through the suburbs without being eaten alive by the same crap they mocked in everyone else?

There really were some interesting elements that made this story stand out in the age of middle-class bohemian wannabes flooding into Starbucks-dotted suburbs, but Mendes ignored that in favor of churning out the most conventional Oscar-friendly package possible.

I agree that Winslett and Michael Shannon were excellent. I still think Leanardo DiCaprio's work in the movie was underrated. But the truth is that everyone was weighed down by the contrived dialogue and clunky structure of the script.

comment #3

Ethan says ...

I was on the fence with it until the insulting final shot of the movie. After that I realized how much I truly hated it. Except Michael Shannon. Fucking love that guy.

comment #4

Dan Revill says ...

Agree with this sentiment completely. It won't be something I return to every week or month but I can see myself watching Revolutionary Road at least once a year on Blu...can't say the same for The Reader or even any of the other 4 nominees (well maybe Slumdog).

comment #5

Alfredo says ...

"the movie made sure to include every domestic melodrama cliche imaginable"

I have heard this complaint from many of my friends as well, but one has to remember the source material; Yates invented these "cliches." We interpret them as such because we're so familiar with them, due to movies like THE ICE STORM and (ironically) AMERICAN BEAUTY. It's important to fully understand the period in which the movie takes place. The mid-century domestic yearning that the Wheelers are afflicted with was not cliched at that point.

comment #6

bluetide says ...

Alfredo, you're right about Yates. That was what initially drew me to the movie. I thought that the setting could give us an inside look at a time when the suburbs weren't already regarded by liberals like myself as soul-killing enterprises; a time when the suburbs seemed like a welcome reprieve from the crumbling urban infrastructure of the era. The suburbs were still new and exciting when Yates' novel was released. The creeping realization that life there was all it had been cracked up to be didn't manifest on a large scale until the Sixties.

But the movie made never even acknowledged this. The fact that Yate's novel invented the genre doesn't justify Mendes recycling the same scenes from dozens of similar movies. Leo and Kate are in fact already aware of how terrible the suburbs must be and comfort themselves with the thought that it's only temporary. The movie never sets up the prospect of the suburbs as being remotely enticing which makes the martial discord we see didactic not tragic.

I also never understood why the choice was set up as Paris v. Suburbs with the option of moving back to the city never even coming up. Or the total absence of the kids in the movie. The world it created was simply not convincing.

comment #7

btwnproductions says ...

No one's really jumping for joy over THE READER, either. They're both lost causes for audiences. The only thing worse for their fate would have been to set them in Iraq.

comment #8

Breedlove says ...

bluetide makes a good point re: the absence of the children. I had a problem with this as well...where the hell were their two kids the entire movie? They'd be having these screaming matches left and right and there was never an upset kid to deal with.

A couple of shots struck me as specific references to American Beauty, particularly the first shot of them eating at the dinner table, and the shot of April trimming the hedges as the camera pans by her. Where do we stand on, um, paying homage to your own film?

2008 turned out to be a noticeably weak year. When the one movie that had me walk out of the theater in shock at how great it was, was about a guy dressed as a bat...that is not a good sign. Malick, Mann and Cameron to the rescue this year I hope.

comment #9

Ray says ...

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD was the best picture of 2008? Seriously??

As has been mentioned already, the film trundles out every "marriage in trouble" cliche imaginable - discontent, infidelity, etc. - and then adds a ridiculous final denouement that had me cringing.

The film is directed like a BIg Important Oscar Film without bringing any of it to life. It's an airless and unmoving affair.

comment #10

MilkMan says ...

Sam Mendes is a hack. Kevin Spacey and Conrad Hall had more to do with the success of American Beauty than Mendes did. Hall basically directed the movie from a visual standpoint, Spacey directed himself, and then, in the editing room, it was Spacey who told Mendes what the structure of the film should be, how it should end, what should be left out. I thought this was common knowledge. Mendes is lucky to have a job making movies. Rev. Road was camp, pure and simple, in league with Frank Perry at his worst. A better example of what this movie should have been is the George Segal film "Loving." And don't get me started on the book. The book is flawlessly written in Yates inimitable voice. Mendes has no voice as a director. He has good taste and that's about it. Let this movie die already.

comment #11

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

I'll second what MM just said.

comment #12

bluetide says ...

Also I don't know who Jeremy Fassler hangs around with, but there was a pretty strong consensus in favor of Sideways and Brokeback Mountain when they were released. Maybe there was a decent size group who didn't think either deserved Best Picture, but I don't remember many critics or viewers hating either movie. Sideways was one of the best movies of the decade and Brokeback, while a bit hokey in parts, still has Ledger's performance and some great cinematography.

comment #13

Phatang! says ...

I love marital discomfort movies! I mean, "Scenes From A Marriage" is one of my favorites of all time. The six hour version! And I love the book "Revolutionary Road." It's devastating.

The movie, however, is garbage. It stripped the book of all its personality and complexity. And it rushes through the story like none of the filmmakers really liked it in the first place. Find me an authentic moment in it, and I'll find you a funny one in "The Reader."

So Fassler (and, by extension, Wells) need to find another explanations as to why they fell for this embarrassing piece of shit.

comment #14

Gordie Lachance says ...

Revolutionary Road is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, that was turned into a thuddingly mediocre film. I don't blame Mendes, I blame the screenwriter, who retained none of the subtly, none of the knowingness, none of the character, and none of the comedy of the novel. It was a cut and paste hack job, and I can understand why people dismiss it as a cliched dystopian suburban melodrama.

comment #15

Gordie Lachance says ...

That should be subtlety, but I'm half drunk.

comment #16

scooterzz says ...

i'll probably take heat for this but i think this would have been more interesting in the hands of frank and elenor perry...
that said, i'm aware of all its faults and i still really liked it....

comment #17

the400blows says ...

"What made them so special that they believed they could make it through the suburbs without being eaten alive by the same crap they mocked in everyone else?"

bluetide: It wasn't so much that they were "special." They were city people who never should've moved to the suburbs. There's some people who like living in the suburbs and other people who like living in the city. The Wheelers were the later. But they lived in the suburbs because that was the thing to do during the late 50s and early 60s when your middle-class, WASPY wife is pregnant. For the record, I liked Revolutionary Road and thought it should've been nominated for Best Picture instead of The Reader.

comment #18

MickTravisMcGee says ...

Mendes has great taste -- he picks good material, casts well, gets the right crew, uses the right music ... but, yeah, he's a hack.

Everything about this film is self-conscious. I found it completely unconvincing from start to finish. Even the extras walking around Grand Central Station look like extras.

But I think my main problem with Mendes is: Almost every one of his movies owes way too much to other movies.

"Road to Perdition" is "Godfather" redux, crossed with Robert Benton.

Jarhead is screamingly in debt to "Full Metal Jacket."

And "Revolutionary Road" is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff" in color, with DiCaprio clearly aping Jack Nicholson's performance from "Carnal Knowledge."

comment #19

bluetide says ...

the400blows, as a city person from the suburbs, let me retort. Yes, they are city people. But what drew them into the suburbs? The fact that "that's what a WASPy husband with a pregnant wife was supposed to do" doesn't really cut it. These are, as you said, city people who really believed they were more cultured and more intelligent (i.e. superior) to their fellow suburbanites from the onset. Why didn't they stay in the city? We're never given a convincing answer to that question and it's one of the most fundamental questions in the movie. The movies silence on that matter sets the stage for the two hours of emotional dishonesty that follow.

comment #20

scooterzz says ...

mick -- while 'rev road' owes a lot to earlier movies, i don't think any of them are the ones you cited...mendes (like hayes in 'far from heaven') draws much from sirk and hunter...even the misunderstood acting style makes sense in this context....
bluetide-- i'm assuming from your post that you weren't there...those who thought they were 'superior' and 'more cultured' did, in fact , move to the 'burbs in the late '50's-early 60's....

comment #21

the400blows says ...

"Why didn't they stay in the city? We're never given a convincing answer to that question and it's one of the most fundamental questions in the movie. "

bluetide: That's a good question and I don't have an answer for that. But then why did Nora in Ibsen's "The Doll House," Madame Bovary, and April Wheeler all agree to be in a loveless marriage and wind up becoming a victim of their circumstances? To me, April Wheeler was the main character in "Revolutionary Road." With that said, "Revolutionary Road" was a study on the instability of the April Wheeler character. I think we should stop seeing "Revolutionary Road" as a study of the Wheeler marriage and focus more on the human condition of April Wheeler. That's why I didn't mind "Revolutionary Road." April Wheeler reminded me of a contemporary version of Nora.

comment #22

Gordie Lachance says ...

bluetide said "Why didn't they stay in the city? We're never given a convincing answer to that question."

You're forgetting (or ignoring) that the suburbs were an invention of the 50's, brought to you by that other new invention, the interstate highway system.

They wouldn't have had any way of knowing that they weren't suburbians until they got there.

If you did a page by page comparison of the novel and screenplay you would hardly recognize them as the same story. Truly one of the worst adaptations ever.

comment #23

Gordie Lachance says ...

Here's what Frank Wheeler said (in the book) about the type of people who would complain about a film being too 'depressing'.:

"This whole country's rotten with sentimentality. That's what's the matter, isn't it? Even more than the profit motive or the loss of spiritual values or the fear of the bomb? This steady, insistent vulgarizing of every idea and every emotion into some kind of pre-digested intellectual baby food; this optimistic, smiling through, easy way out sentimentality in everybody's view of life?"

He's right. Still. That's why every movie has a happy ending, every news broadcast ends with a warm fuzzy human interest story, and 90% of the planet clings to some fantasy about heaven or 92 virgins in the afterlife.

Better to push bad thoughts away rather than deal with them.

Too bad they didn't give Leo any of that dialogue though, instead of all the on-the-nose marital bickering.

comment #24

actionman says ...

yeah, Sam Mendes is a hack. What the fuck is wrong with you people?

comment #25

bluetide says ...

My point was that the movie had a great chance to do something fresh with the genre because neither one of the main characters was looking for a boring, secure life - as one member of the couple almost always is in movies like this. But Mendes basically ignored that in an attempt to make just another generic marital dysfunction movie.

And Gordie, you're absolutely right about the Eisenhower Interstate system. But of course the movie never acknowledges this, either. I was excited to see what the suburbs would have looked like to someone who had never seen them before but there was none of that in the move.

comment #26

Phatang! says ...

I new when I first read that Haythe was adapting the novel that it would turn out exactly as it did. Did anyone see The Clearing? It had the same generic, inert characters. It probably took him two weeks to write this adaptation...

And thanks, Gordie, for that excerpt from the novel: it's a great reminded of what a smart, energized, trapped character Frank is supposed to be. Rather than the dim bullshitter he's turned into in the movie. And NO April should never have been the main character--it's Frank's story. (but of course Winslet spearheaded the project, and her husband directed it, so naturally they had to change that...)

comment #27

Gordon27 says ...

"I have heard this complaint from many of my friends as well, but one has to remember the source material; Yates invented these "cliches.""

I've heard this complaint from anybody who wants to defend the movie, and I always say the same thing -- we're talking about a movie made in 2008, not a book written in 1962. The movie is not the book. I don't like to criticize movies for the things they left out of books [though, in cases like "The Reader", it's hard not to criticize; they cut out Hannah reading Holocaust books after she learns to read which, while certainly sappy, is the only reason for the story to spend so much time focusing on reading and her learning to read] but, in the same way, it's not fair to say that a movie is good just because it's doing the same things that a good book did (assuming that it is even doing the same things).

comment #28

K. Bowen says ...

" "the movie made sure to include every domestic melodrama cliche imaginable"

I have heard this complaint from many of my friends as well, but one has to remember the source material; Yates invented these "cliches." "

Exactly, this might have been a great film in 1965. The film tackles the divorce trend, the suburban conformity, abortion, etc., everything that was ahead of its time in 1960. But this film has arrived onscreen at the tail-end of these trends, rather than on the upturn.

On top of that, you can't effectively indict marriage and the suburban lifestyle just because one guy has a batshit wife.

comment #29

K. Bowen says ...

Just because an ending is depressing doesn't mean it isn't sentimental.

comment #30

jackymendis says ...

As has been mentioned already, the film trundles out every "marriage in trouble" cliche imaginable - discontent, infidelity, etc. - and then adds a ridiculous final denouement that had me cringing.

The film is directed like a BIg Important unlock huawei modems