By Faris Tanyos for KDRV
 
June 17, 2009
 
Grade: B+
 
"Titanic" is crying out for a sequel.
 
I would call it "Titanic 2: The Return of Jack". 12 years on, Rose is walking down a grocery aisle with two young children. Suddenly, Jack jumps out from behind a crackerjack display, "HI ROSE! SURPRISE, I'M BACK! DID YOU MISS ME?"
 
Rose begins screaming hysterically. What follows is a B-movie horror/thriller I won't describe here, but let's just say it ends badly for Jack... again, on a boat. I'm still working out the kinks.
 
There's not much that's revolutionary about "Revolutionary Road". It's a sequel of sorts, but it's more what "Before Sunset" was to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy than my Titanic 2 fantasy. We can think of it as a look into their future if Jack hadn't gone down with the ship. They get married, have a couple kids, settle down, and then, reality sets in. Are they still blissfully in love? Is Jack an artist, or has he traded in his pencils and sketch pad for a suit, briefcase and a bowler hat? Does Rose regret not marrying into a rich family? Love stories LOVE dealing with the beginning, and sometimes the end, but rarely the middle.
 
If Revolutionary Road wasn't based on a 1961 Richard Yates novel of the same name, I would have suspected it was just a vehicle to get Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet back on the screen together. Maybe the screenplay was.
 
It's the 1950s, and Frank and April Wheeler are a young couple with two kids living a middle class life in a middle class Connecticut suburb. They're playing out the American Dream, but they're only acting it out, because just below the surface, boredom and unhappiness are brewing, ready to spill over.
 
Frank is turning 30. He works at Knox Business Machines, the same New York marketing firm his father devoted most of his life to. Frank tells a friend that he promised himself he wouldn't live his father's life, but look at him now; he feels like a failure, unwillingly following in his father's footsteps. April's dream to be an actress hasn't panned out either. Her performance in a local theater production isn't well received, and she knows it. She's destined to be a housewife.
 
The film flashes back, giving us quick glimpses of the first time they saw each other at a party, talked, danced, fell in love. "Frank Wheeler, I think you're the most interesting person I've ever met," April tells him. If I had a nickel for the number of times I...
 
They speak brashly, youthfully about going against the norm. 7-years-on, they realize, all of it was just empty talk, and now they're poster children for the norm.
 
(You know when you stumble upon a picture album of your straight-cut parents as 20-something hippies, riding motorcycles, partying at Woodstock.)
 
Meanwhile, their oblivious friends see them as the perfect family. They gush over the Wheelers, envy them, almost idolize them. There's their Realtor Helen Givings (Kathy Bates), who brought them to the neighborhood that is Revolutionary Road. Helen seems like someone who's never had a truly meaningful conversation in her life. Her senile husband Howard (Richard Easton) has long since tuned her out. Then there's Milly and Shep Campbell (Kathryrn Hahn and David Harbour). Milly is bubbly and empty, Shep is trying and failing to hide his love for April.
 
On his birthday, Frank has an affair with a girl in his office. He comes home to find April ecstatic. "Let's move to Paris," she says. Make a new start. Does he know how much international organizations pay secretaries over there? In Paris, April can work, and Frank will have time to finally figure out what he wants to do with his life. "It's unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working year after year at a job he can't stand," she says.
 
They decide to do it. They hastily inform their kids, their skeptical friends, they prepare to sell their house. Paris will be the cure-all, their Mecca.
 
You see where this is going.
 
Frank gets offered a promotion that pays a lot of money. That money means security. He has second thoughts about the move.
 
One day the Givings bring by their middle-aged son John (Michael Shannon) for a visit. John, a mathematician, is mentally ill, living in a psychiatric hospital where his treatment includes shock therapy. He has a sharp tongue, absolutely no filter, and a refreshing honesty that contradicts the guarded behavior of everyone around him. He speaks his mind like it's nobody's business, and in the span of a few minutes, lays bare the Wheelers true motivations about their trip to Paris. "Hopeless emptiness... Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness," he tells them.
 
John is in only two scenes, yet they are the most important in the film, because of their revealing nature. Shannon faces a challenge. His character has to be memorable; it has to linger in the mind of the audience. John is unusual, and his words piercing. Shannon's performance stands out, it elevates the film, and he fully deserves the Best Supporting Oscar Nomination he received.
 
April drops a bomb on Frank that puts their fantasy trip in even more peril. He returns the favor. The Wheeler fights get more frequent and more vicious. "You were just some boy who made me laugh at a party once, and now I loathe the sight of you," April says.
 
"You're not worth the powder it would take to blow you up. You are an empty, empty, hollow shell of a woman," he screams at her.
 
Paris is suddenly unattainable, but did they ever believe it was, or was it just a carrot to give them hope? Because the illusion of hope is sometimes the only reason to keep on keeping on.
 
Many onscreen couple-fights often comes across as forced and unrealistic (Watch "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "The Break Up" for proof of this), and since we've all been in those fights, we know when we're watching something fake. When asked if she'd ever considered divorce, Billy Graham's wife Ruth responded, "No, I've never thought about divorce in all these 35 years of marriage, but I did think of murder a few times."
 
It's a tribute to Justin Haythe's screenplay that we feel a genuine searing, almost scary hate between these two that crescendos to an almost unbearable pitch. However, the scenes and situations themselves feel a little too staged. An argument for the sake of an argument loses its way if there's not enough reason behind it. There needs to be the appropriate build up, and often during this film, there isn't. (See "Kramer vs. Kramer" for an example of this done well.)
 
There's something about a DiCaprio performance that is disconcerting and edgy enough to keep us interested. In "Swingers" Trent tells Mike, "I don't want you to be the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone's really hoping makes it happen. I want you to be like the guy in the rated R movie, you know, the guy you're not sure whether or not you like yet. You're not sure where he's coming from."
 
DiCaprio's the guy in the rated ‘R' movie.
 
The performances in Revolutionary Road are fantastic. The direction from Sam Mendes ("American Beauty", "Road to Perdition") is excellent. The script is excellent. The photography is beautiful. The transitions between storylines and scenes are seamless. But I felt like something was missing. Mendes doesn't capture the magic and brilliance of American Beauty here, even though it's a worthy attempt to transport its same themes to a different time.
 
I can't quite pinpoint it, but I think what's missing is soul. This movie is an "empty hollow shell". Just like April.
 
ftanyos@kdrv.com