Lost highway

Winslet and DiCaprio go to suburban hell in
the less-than-subtle Revolutionary Road

CORROSION OF CONFORMITY: DiCaprio and Winslet

by MATTHEW HAYS

Having watched both Gran Torino and Revolutionary Road, this must rank as one of the least subtle screening weeks in my movie-going history.

Director Sam Mendes, who so valiantly skewered the horrors and hypocrisies of middle-class suburbia in American Beauty, here again takes shots, this time at ’50s-era conformity. Make no mistake: it was a horror show. Women had their expected roles, and men, by extension, were also trapped by their assigned gender tasks.

Leo DiCaprio, apparently recovered from that boating accident the last time he was teamed with Winslet, falls madly for her. The two have big dreams. But seven years and two kids later, they are trapped. They have a house on the ironically titled Revolutionary Road (there’s nothing revolutionary about it, if that one went over your head) and he has a soulless job working for some dreadful corporation.

Winslet comes up with a crazy plan: what if he quit his job and they went off to Paris, with kids in tow. She would take a job as a secretary for the UN or something like that, and DiCaprio could finally explore his dreams and figure out what he wants to do with his life.

Since this screenplay has “doomed” spray-painted all over it in fluorescent hues, we know things aren’t going to end in gay Paris. For various reasons, they have to abort their plans to go off to Europe. Cut to Winslet breaking down, as all that lush art direction gives her a bad dual case of claustrophobia and indigestion.

It’s all seriously unsubtle. In fact, there’s even a clinically insane character in the film who agrees with their idea of trotting off to Paris, and then ridicules them when they announce their decision to call off the move. He becomes the conscience of the movie: the world really has gone crazy when a crazy person is the only one who makes sense.

Winslet took the Golden Globe on Sunday for this performance. It’s one of two roles (along with The Reader) in which she plays a woman who goes completely bonkers. She gives great crazy, but the films themselves could have used lessons in toning down the didacticism.

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD IS
NOW IN THEATRES