Before I set off for the cinema to see Sam Mendes’s latest, I made the mistake of listening to Mark Kermode’s review of it, available on his Radio 2 podcast. Firstly, I should have waited until after I came out of the movie; I try not to read too many reviews of the film I’m about to go and see… it spoils it, no? Doing this does tend to colour perspectives, however much you think it won’t. Secondly, it was a mistake as it meant I've spent half my night writing this. As much as I respect Kermode, I must protest. And, in true Kermodian style, deliver this rant...

Mark Kermode’s main gripe with 'Revolutionary Road' is that he’d seen it all before. Blue Velvet, he claims, did this stuff over twenty years ago. He's thinking suburbia as hell, the middle class dream as an unsatisfactory one etc etc. Sure, Blue Velvet has spawned a thousand parodies, controversies and then, inevitably, imitators; the opening sequence -- with the white picket fence and the camera burrowing underneath the turf, discovering all kinds of creepy crawlies devouring what looks like each other-- is particularly iconic. Underneath every surface there is always dirt. But it's not what Revolutionary Road is really about.


Kermode’s point is one I’ve heard many people who haven’t seen the film argue (including a couple of friends, who didn’t join me when I went to see it). However to argue this after seeing the film is like buying a cream egg, and only eating the chocolate shell. Essentially, the film’s subject is two fold; yes, it is about how suburbia is full of the said and the unsaid. But it’s also about a failing, fracturing, relationship. Its association with the theme of suburbia is tangled, messy and tortured. There’s no simple solution to why the central couple, the Wheelers, are unhappy.

Before moving to Revolutionary Road, the Wheelers were a happy go lucky pair; Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) wanted to make a real impact with his life, April (Kate Winslet) wanted to be an actress; they both wanted to move to Paris. The film never makes it clear when the rot sets in; it could be when Frank starts the commute to the city, it could be when they have their first kid. However, the catalyst comes at the beginning of the film, in the shape of a local am dram play; April’s acting debut goes down more like a lead balloon, more of a storm in a tea cup than revelatory tempest. The subsequent tension that oozes out of the apparent debacle of the play's, and her own, performance's failure is what sets the horror show that is Revolutionary Road into action.


As much as Kate Winslet’s other movie this Oscar season, The Reader, wasn’t about the Holocaust( but rather about how you can never get over your first love) Revolutionary Road is not so much about suburbia, it’s about what happens when infatuation, and 'romantic' love, dies. It’s painful to watch; it's a covert lecture at the audience's own naivete that idealistic romantic dreams are possible. Mendes is telling us that a relationship can't survive on emotion, on love.


The film is less American Beauty, and more Scenes from a Marriage. It’s a dialogue-heavy picture, set mostly in gloomy, colour-drained interiors. It’s also an acting showcase for the two leads... as a recent Guardian article said, it’s as close a movie can get to filmed acting. To compensate for the lack of location and motion, Mendes adapts some fairly intrusive camera work in the latter half of the film to show ratcheting tensions, reminiscent of something Woody Allen used throughout 1992's uncomfortable Husbands and Wives. With Mendes, it's a jarring technique that doesn’t quite have the effect intended.


Shortcomings and pessismism to one side; the main reason to watch this film is most definitely Kate Winslet. She seems to be channelling years of pain. Next to her, DiCaprio is weak; with a different leading lady his limitations as an actor might not have been so clearly apparent. With Winslet, he looks like a poor man’s Jack Nicholson, and his performance seems to emanate from his mouth, rather than his head or his heart. Move aside, kid.


Without getting too deep into a full scale review of the film, my main point is this: I think Kermode should re-watch this one. Sure, it’s an actor’s piece above everything else, and some of the harder edges, and the social commentary, of the novel are lost on the big screen. It's not entirely technically successful. But there’s so much pain, hurt and disappointment in this movie; it’s less Desperate Housewives, and more high tragedy.