Review: Revolutionary Road

Title: Revolutionary Road
Starring: Leonardo De Caprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Original Novel: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
Screenplay Written by: Justin Haythe
Music: Thomas Newman
Director of Photography: Roger Deakins

Score: 7.3 out of 10

There is a very evocative piece of music which keeps coming up through out the movie. I guess it is like the central characters Frank and April keep getting into their disappointments because they see their life is empty and hopeless. This mind you with a typical American middle class family. The couple have all the material comforts they need. They have a nice house in the suburbia, 2 little children, a handsome husband and a wonderful wife. Beneath this trankuil surface there is emptiness and hopelessness.

The movie high lights the plight of people who have a certain vague dream and they do not celebrate their everyday success because they are waiting for the dream to come true. In the movie, the couple get married with one such dream - which we never come to know clearly in the movie. That is good. In real life too we are prone to be running after something which is very nebulous and abstract and feel very disappointed when that exact expectation does not materialize.

The highlight of the movie is definitely the screen play by Justin Haythe. Based on a 50s novel by Richard Yates by the same name, the film is replete with many complex scenes which explore the nature of the relationship between Frank and April. It is shot in closeup. These scenes reveal about the lead characters in an helps a picture of the character evolve in our minds. Leo and Kate's acting brings out the scenes spectacularly. The general aura of the film brings back the 50s America when the post war prosperity can be seen but the movie paints a picture of homogeneity suggesting that this prosperity is not deep.

The director Sam Mendes and the director of Photography Roger Deakins and the music director Thomas Newman get credit for bringing the audience closer and closer to the world between Frank and April. I think Kate Winslet's performance in this movie is far better than her role in the Reader for which she got the oscars.

I give the movie 7.3 out of 10