I started watching Revoluationary Road on the flight home from Bali this past week and finally finished watching it this evening. I originally thought it looked slow and melodramatic but was pleasantly (or depressingly) surprised - it is a thought-provoking film with brilliantly intense acting.
The period drama set in the 1950's stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as Frank and April, a young couple who appear to be living out the American dream, with April as the stay-at-home wife rearing the couple's two young children, and Frank succesfully climbing the corporate ladder. Below is an interview given by Michael Shannon who plays one of the key roles in the film as a recently-released mental patient befriended by the couple and who ironically provides the most scathingly honest assessments of the couple throughout the film.
As the story progresses, it meanders through excitement, shock, heartbreak and tragedy, closely examining the timeless questions around finding one's life partner, how that goal fits in with individual life fulfilment, and the concept of love. If we fall in love with people that share our dreams and aspirations, what happens to that love when those dreams and aspirations change? When one spouse's happiness is at odds with the other spouse', whose one should win out and how should the decision be made? If you come to love the life you have, despite it being a fraction of the life you originally wanted to live, does it make you a complacent coward or have you simply matured?
Directed by Sam Mendes, it is an adaptation of the celebrated novel by Richard Yates. Watch the trailer here.
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