One of the best trailers I’ve seen in ages. No dialogue for 53 seconds, and then only a sparse two lines. Cat Power’s jangly, mournful Sea of Love getting stuck like an old-fashioned record; signalling breakdown and fracture better than any scripted voiceover. Everything else left to our imagination, unlike almost every other trailer you see these days. Not to mention an ingenious revival of the split screen and tantalising glimpses of Roger Deakins‘ sublime cinematography.
But even if the trailer wasn’t this good, Revolutionary Road has a lot to recommend it. Sam Mendes makes striking films, and though sometimes they bear fairly visible flaws – see Jarhead and Road to Perdition – it seems to me those flaws are mostly just a testament to his profound cinematic ambition.
The film is adapted from an acclaimed American novel by Richard Yates. First published in 1961, it became recognized as a pivotal twentieth-century tragedy of suburban disquiet and disappointment. According to the author, the ‘revolutionary road’ of the title did not lead anywhere but was in fact disappearing, as Yates explained in an interview in 1972:
there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs – a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witch-hunts.
Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that – felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit…”
Frank and April Wheeler, the young protagonists of Yates’ novel, are the everyman figures doomed to play out this betrayal in the shape of their marriage. Some critics have complained that the film adaptation of Revolutionary Road too closely suggests American Beauty transplanted to the fifties, but I imagine the dream team of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio – in their first on-screen reunion since Titanic – will ensure a very different kind of movie. Both have matured into outstanding actors, with the stature and depth to carry a grown-up, subtle tragedy.
Fortunately they also boast the charisma to make even domestic purgatory watchable, and in fact, many say Winslet could garner another Oscar nomination for her role as April (she won Best Actress at the Golden Globes last night). Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers says: “the glorious Winslet defines what makes an actress great”, while in New York Magazine, David Edelstein swoons: “There isn’t a banal moment in Winslet’s performance—not a gesture, not a word. Is Winslet now the best English-speaking film actress of her generation? I think so.”
Let’s see. Revolutionary Road is in UK cinemas from January 30.
I’m really optimistic about Revolutionary Road.
Let’s just hope that it doesn’t go the way of The Reader. That film also had a really good trailer, and won rave reviews for Kate Winslet’s performance – but turned out to be banal, sluggish, ethically timorous, lukewarm, boring dross.
Any chance you’ve managed to get to see RR yet? I was terribly moved by the final scene (so much so that I couldn’t sleep that night, and was almost physically affected for about a week after), and am almost desperate to hear some thoughts on it. Also looking for a male perspective if you’ve seen any round Ms Filtnib…??