“A” Rating by Robert W. Hammerle

Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road,” base on the acclaimed novel by Richard Yates, is as brilliantly crafted as it is painful to watch. Imagine consulting with the most respected psychoanalysis in the world and having him tell you after several sessions, “Sorry, I can’t help you. It seems clear that you have thrown away your life and you are beyond redemption. Now please pay my bill and go back to your compromised, mediocre existence on Revolutionary Road.”

This piercing drama is like watching a fluoroscope of your own id. Are you really happy, or are you just pretending to be? Are you living the life you chose, or is it a result of a series of compromises where you caved in to the expectations of society? If money was irrelevant, would you be working at the job you have held all of your life?

These are just some of the many penetrating questions you are forced to confront as you watch the tragedy unfolding before you in the person of Frank and April Wheeler. Played with brave, passionate honesty by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, we find this 30-year-old married couple trying to salvage themselves from the quicksand of life.

Frank (DiCaprio) is employed as a salesman for a national company, working in a cubicle surrounded by men just like him. They all wear the same hats, suits and thinly disguised sense of desperate resignation as they pretend that their lives are perfectly normal. They drink martinis for lunch, smoke constantly, have affairs with women from the secretarial pool and then return home at night to their booze swilling Barbara Billingsley-like wives in the suburbs.

Frank is bored to death and slowly being poisoned by the corrosive forces of his environment. He has lost any semblance of who he was as a younger man, and it’s as if he is about to awaken to find that his body has been replaced by one of the emotionless pod people so vividly displayed in the classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956).

Unlike her husband, April (Ms. Winslet) knows they are drowning, and she is desperately searching for a life preserver. Their seemingly perfect little lives with their two perfect children and their perfect home in their perfect suburb is in reality nothing more than a Gothic hell.

April sees that they are leading a life of conformity that they did not choose. She further sees that when they met as young lovers, they felt they were special people with great dreams. Instead of living any semblance of that dream, she senses that they have to do something or they are going to become emotionally dead not only to the world, but to each other.

April wants Frank to quit his job and move the family to Paris where she can get a government job while he takes the time to discover what he really wants to do with his life. Frank wants to go, knowing full well that he is working at a company that once employed his father, a father that he remembers silently wishing, “God, don’t let me become like him.”

Can the Wheelers find the strength to courageously make this move, or will the inertia of their surroundings keep them trapped behind the invisible bars of their social prison? That is the central dilemma playing out in “Revolutionary Road,” and I strongly doubt that any member of the audience will resist a private, desperate feeling of, “My God, is my life really any different than Frank and Aprils?”

Quite frankly, it is because of that very feeling that you are likely to remain uncomfortable from the time you enter the theater until the closing credits. It is also for that reason that I find it hard to believe that this extraordinary film will find anything close to a mass audience. After all, who wants to pay for a form of entertainment that will continually challenge you to reflect on the possibility that you, like the Wheelers, have volitionally chosen security over passion, comfort over adventure and wonder.

It is impossible to overstate just how convincing DiCaprio and Winslet are as the troubled Wheelers. In a performance that is again woefully under-appreciated, DiCaprio perfectly captures a man who caves in to the gravitational pull of convention. He simply won’t take risks, even if it means that he will alienate everyone he cares about, not to mention risk losing his own soul.

How the Oscar folks picked Ms. Winslet’s admirable performance in the horribly over-hyped “The Reader” over this searing portrayal of a woman trying to save her family and herself is beyond me. Of all her many tremendous performances in the past, nothing compares to her role as April. Your heart will break as you watch hers get crushed.

While “Revolutionary Road” takes place in 1955, it might as well have been written for life in the 21st Century. From the time most of us graduate from college, the lucky ones recognize that they have a passion to do something. Whether it is to be an actress like April; a defense lawyer like Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962); the politician who will make a difference like Bobby Kennedy or FDR or Barack Obama; or simply a person who wants to live with the courage of their convictions, most of us yearn to be that someone who will make a difference in life. Yet how many of us incrementally compromise away that passion for reasons of financial security, family obligations and the gradually crushing debt flowing from material acquisitions?

There are many poignant scenes in “Revolutionary Road,” none more telling than when the Wheelers tell their neighbors, Shep and Milly Campbell, that they are moving to Paris. While Milly (Kathryn Hahn) gushes over the Wheelers’ decision to leave during a visit in their home, she then collapses in uncontrollable tears when they leave. What we see in her anguish is a woman in agony as she watches the Wheelers displaying the courage that she knows she lacks.

Additionally, it is impossible to leave a review of “Road” without reference to the overpowering performance of Michael Shannon as the mentally disturbed neighbor, John Givings. In a role that has been Oscar nominated for best performance by an actor in a supporting role, Shannon dominates the screen during the three brief scenes in which he appears.

As a mentally disturbed mathematician with a PhD, he is the only one who has the courage to pierce through the Wheeler’s phony denials and justifications. Shannon is nothing short of marvelous, and he would undoubtedly win the Oscar would it not be for Heath Ledger’s legendary turn as The Joker in “The Dark Knight.”

While this upsetting work of cinematic genius will likely soon be forgotten, it should really be used as source material for sociology classes in colleges across this country. Before they are called upon to choose, young people should see the lifetime price paid when you abandon your dreams in exchange for expediency. What price glory if it comes at the cost of your personal happiness and contentment?