Photo by Francois Duhamel/DreamWorks, Francois Duhamel/DreamWorks
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio share a tender moment in their dysfunctional married lives in "Revolutionary Road."
As the two Golden Globes she won Sunday demonstrate, I'm not alone in thinking Kate Winslet may be the best star-level actress in movies today.
By "best," I mean she is always watchable and convincing, and alternately alluring and harrowing. She projects intelligence, and the sense that unrest, even revolution is fomenting beneath the classical if déclassé curvy beauty of her sturdy frame.
Photo by Francois Duhamel/DreamWorks
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio share a tender moment in their dysfunctional married lives in "Revolutionary Road."
Frank and April, a married couple in the 1950s, have always seen themselves as special, different, ready and willing to live their lives based on ...
Rating: R for language and some sexual content/nudity
Length: 119 minutes
Released: December 26, 2008 NY/LA
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, David Harbour
Director: Sam Mendes
Writer: Justin Haythe, Richard Yates
These qualities have made Winslet a muse of seething suburban self-loathing, first in "Little Children" and now in "Revolutionary Road," directed by Winslet's husband, Sam Mendes, whose decade-old "American Beauty" was a much-lauded representation of the somewhat clichéd notion that a home in suburbia isn't so much a symbol of success as a doorway to hell.
That idea was more daring in 1961, when Richard Yates published "Revolutionary Road" ("a close to perfect novel," according to The Commercial Appeal's Fredric Koeppel, writing on TheShelfLifeBlog.com, the newspaper's book blog).
Smartly adapted for the screen by writer Justin Haythe, "Revolutionary Road" isn't always easy to watch. In the film as in the novel (both are set in the mid-1950s), seemingly "perfect" couple Frank and April Wheeler, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Winslet (together for the first time since "Titanic"), tear into each other with the mean-spirited, theatrical gusto of George and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
We watch as their love (or the delusion of love) curdles to hate, as expressed in a series of verbal knock-down drag-outs, interrupted by time-outs for doomed reconciliation, strained social outings and fantasies of escape. (Frank and April, who consider themselves superior to their suburban milieu, spend much of the film planning to move to Paris, where Frank -- an unhappy office employee of Knox Business Machines -- is supposed to discover his "true" self.)
On a first viewing, I found the couple's relentless anger somewhat tiresome, and April's fate somewhat programmed; but after reading the book and seeing the film again, I've come to admire the filmmakers' integrity and the movie's fidelity to its source. If the film seems obvious compared to the novel, it correctly captures the idea that the young, even naive, Frank and April are play actors in their own lives, taking on the roles of "spouse" and "parent" with the attitude of someone accepting a recurring part in a series while all the time hoping that something more inspiring will come along. (In fact, the movie opens with April's ill-fated debut in an amateur theatrical troupe.)
This idea makes the still baby-faced DiCaprio an appropriate choice for Frank: Both men seem challenged by the transition to "manhood." It also validates the sometimes stagey nature of a film that takes place mostly indoors, on sets inhabited by superb actors in true showcase roles. The cast includes native Memphian Kathy Bates as a chatty real estate agent who uses such words as "scoot" and "toodle-oo"; David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn as the couple next door, who sense the condescension of their alleged best friends; and the always-scary Michael Shannon as a mentally disturbed man who -- in one of the story's more obvious ironies -- is more honest and insightful than the "sane" people he encounters.
Of course, "Revolutionary Road" is impeccably mounted. It's the epitome of a quality prestige production, with vintage furnishings and clothing to make the cast of "Mad Men" envious, and glossy pop songs on the soundtrack by the Ink Spots and the Ravens that are as polished as Mendes' compositions.
The movie is at the Studio on the Square.
-- John Beifuss: 529-2394
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