‘Revolutionary Road’ is anything but a sinking ship

‘ ‘ ‘ Despite what skeptics might say, ‘Revolutionary Road’ is not ‘Titanic 2.’ The pairing of… ‘ ‘ ‘ Despite what skeptics might say, ‘Revolutionary Road’ is not ‘Titanic 2.’ The pairing of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t just Rose sharing the door with Jack, the ship actually making it to New York and the story of what happens next. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘Revolutionary Road’ is a dramatic masterpiece that drives thoughts of icebergs and the Heart of the Ocean far from moviegoers’ minds. ‘ ‘ ‘ Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio star as depressed, bored, suburban wife and husband April and Frank Wheeler. After one glance from across the room at a party in New York City, April and Frank are shown many years later, already married with two kids and unhappy. ‘ ‘ ‘ After this unhappiness is firmly established in the Wheeler household on Frank’s 40th birthday, April proposes moving the entire family to Paris to start anew. Frank isn’t entirely enthusiastic, but decides that this might be their last shot at living the lives of which they dreamed. ‘ ‘ ‘ However, Frank soon finds contentment in his life. He is offered a promotion that would require a bit more work but involves a substantial increase in pay. To get through long days of work, a young, cute secretary named Maureen Grube takes Frank out for drinks and extramarital affairs of that sort. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘Revolutionary Road’ is an extremely thought-provoking film. Every character is presented in different terms of feminism and sexism. April is trying to be a modern woman in a time when all women had going for them was either a typewriter or children and chores. April refuses that life. She wants to move to France and support the family through a government secretary job while Frank stays at home and finds out what he really wants to do with his life. ‘ ‘ ‘ Even more obvious than the theme of gender is the comparison between liberal and conservative. The greatest example is when April declares that she is pregnant to Frank. Frank follows his inner conservative, and says that now the move to France must be canceled because the unborn child must be raised in the United States. April, however, chooses to have an abortion. ‘ ‘ ‘ Along with April and Frank, Kathryn Hahn (‘Step Brothers’) and David Harbour (‘Brokeback Mountain’) are the Campbells, the next-door neighbors. Milly Campbell accepts her life in the suburbs as a genuine way of living, but her husband, Shep, tries to escape from suburban hell via a ‘romance’ with April. ‘ ‘ ‘ Kathy Bates plays Helen Givings, the realtor who sells the Wheelers their house on Revolutionary Road. It isn’t Bates, however, who gives the best performance, but Michael Shannon, who plays her son, John Givings. John holds a doctorate in mathematics, and is coming from an insane asylum where ‘they shocked all the math out of him’ with electroconvulsive therapy. ‘ ‘ ‘ Shannon gives an unforgettable performance as the light of truth in ‘Revolutionary Road.’ He can point out the truth in any character, as he does with April and Frank on two occasions. He sees the lies that these people are living and how unhappy they really are. ‘ ‘ ‘ Unfortunately, John is labeled an intellectual or a nut-job when the people he talks to can’t handle the truth. What is most remarkable about Shannon’s acting is the similarity to Heath Ledger’s Joker in the summer blockbuster ‘The Dark Knight.’ With Shannon’s verbal exaggerations and facial tics comparable to the Joker’s lip smacks and eccentric arm waving, it is surprising to see Ledger’s influence already affecting the acting world. ‘ ‘ ‘ Director Sam Mendes takes a 1950s drama of epic proportions and maintains the emotional charge throughout the entire film. Even in sequences of minimal action, Mendes still creates the most intense scenes in the history of cinema. ‘ ‘ ‘ After a climactic argument between April and Frank resulting in April smoking outside all night , and an upset Frank staring out the window at her, Frank wakes up to a loving breakfast courtesy of April. ‘ ‘ ‘ While the conversation is normal small talk and the actions typical of a married couple’s breakfast, I have never been more terrified in a movie theater. So much emotion and fury is bottled up inside April’s character that the suspense of what will happen next is almost deadly. ‘ ‘ ‘ Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. As a male audience member, she is absolutely frightening.