Revolutionary Road

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A horror film can be anything.  It doesn’t have to include any armed weapons, serial killers, rapists, or anything supernatural.  It may not even have to have the word Saw in the title, but that’s clearly open to debate.  Another kind of  horror film is any film that truly reveals the horror  of which humanity is capable.  Horror in the genuinely intimate sense of the term can be nothing more than the relationship between two people, the lies they share, the lives they invest and invade, and the notion that each person has within them the possibility of being utterly repulsive and worthy of being feared.  Horror.

Revolutionary Road is a movie about the Wheelers, a family of four, husband, wife, son, and daughter, who live on the street of the same name.  Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) works at Knox 500, a pre-computer computer company.  Before Apple and Microsoft and even IBM had really come onto the scene, in this film, the fictional Knox was the company.  It’s the mid-1950′s, so April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) is still a stay-at-home Mom, caring for her two young children. In what turns out to be a macabre tale of a marriage gone horribly wrong, we watch Frank and April attempt to maintain their own sanity amidst the realization that marraige, having children, jobs, travelling even, and life itself is not what they thought it was.  They have no delusions about the grandeur of the American Dream; in fact, they are planning a trip to France to escape the “hopeless emptiness” of that Dream.  Plans change, though.  Plans also explode.

The brilliant acting on the part of both DiCaprio and Winslet is utterly staggering, the kind of acting you expect to see only a few times in any great actor’s lifetime.  Winslet seemes to be getting used to these performances.  Her role in The Reader (also 2008) was a spectacular character whose part in World War II cost her a lifetime of freedom and security, and the promise of beautiful literacy slips away from her with each passing day.  The roles in these movies are very different, each with its own set of difficulties and triumphs.  Winslet plays them both completely honestly and devoid of hackneyed display or melodrama.  She pours herself into these roles, and the result can only be described as a tour de force, a whirlwind of brilliant acting and great Art.  Capital A.

Another aspect of her performance is that it doesn’t seem to detract from the others, only enhances them.  DiCaprio is equally as incredible in this one, and Michael Shannon’s subtle and nuanced performance adds to the movie another layer of enigmatic spiritual soul searching.  DiCaprio hasn’t played a role so challenging in quite some time, probably since The Aviator; his role in The Departed was also no doubt a great one, but this role has him revealing a side of himself that many actors never find, a place of honesty and emotional intensity.  When we see it, we know it is real and it moves us.  It is not our capacity for being moved, but actually being moved that separates the essentialy entertaining and the truly artful.  This movie is clearly the latter.

But it also entertains.  This two hour masterpiece felt like all of ten minutes.  The end achieved something in me that few movies do: I wanted it both to keep going and knew that it ended at just the right moment.  I have had the pleasure and joy of seeing many of the best movies of 2008 in a row now, and this one easily makes the list.  You may grieve with the roll of the credits, but I doubt you will regret it.

Rating: 4/4 Stars