A Revolutionary Road or just a dream...

   The Spanish language translation of this movie by director Sam Mendes ("Solo un sueño") perhaps is a bit more apt than "A revolutionary Road," because the film is about the illusion of purpose, the empty feeling so often dealt with in U.S. literature, life in the suburbs, the sensation that one is but a cog in a big wheel, that doing what society demands us to do only provokes a yawn or a question: what in the world is my life all about, anyway? Get married, have children, move to a nice suburban house, work for a company that generates profits at your expense...The protagonists, April ( Kate Winslet) and Frank (Leonardo Di Caprio) Wheeler live on "Revolutionary road" in sufficient normality until April suggests they sell everything and take off for Paris. There she says she can get a good paying job as a secretary while he tries to find out what his life is all about.  

   The movie is based on Richard Yates novel by the same name and takes place shortly after the horrors of World War II. The couple have two children but their ambitions seemed crushed and that brings on the marriage doldrums: they are caught up in the encroaching insanity of suburban life. Frank has an affair with a new co-worker, at a job he cannot stand, and April plays the role of mother, jumping about a few tired stage plays in a desperate attempt to feel alive. Following an explosive confrontation, April pitches the idea that they simply up and leave for Paris, where Frank  visited during the war and said was the only place in which he ever felt truly happy and vibrant. But an unexpected pregnancy and a new promotion at work stifle their plan, and the two spiral into despair.

   There is an odd sort of universality in the film that is highly unsettling. On the one hand, the class setting of an aspiring middle class that get nowhere, a sort of Death of the Salesman angle. On the other, the sharpness with which the movie pinpoints that unexpected and almost inevitable moment of crisis in a couple relationship when the worst and most cruel feelings erupt with the force of a volcano, when the other ceases to exist as a romantic ideal. At the climax of this breakdown Kate looks at Frank with a nothing expression on her face and says: "I hate you!" She dies tragically aborting her 12 week pregnancy. It is as if the fetus had decided the doubt about giving up everything to search for that inmaterial essence they long for: a meaning for their lives. In the process Sam Mendes invites the viewer to walk a tight rope between tragedy and deep depression. Curiously, a brilliant man suffering from mental illness is the character who sees most clearly through the social veneer.

    For those readers whose English is still a bit weak, here are some comments in Spanish on Yates’ novel: "Revolutionary Road es un tesoro, una joya, un hallazgo. Los ojos y oídos del señor Yates son un don del cielo. Creo que no sé de momgima ptra mpveña recoemte qie ,e jaua o,´resopmadp tamtp. íes ñas cpsti,nres u ,pdps de sis gemtes están, a mi parecer, perfectamente observados." Dorothy Parker.

   "La excelencia de Revolutionary Road estriba en la integridad con la que el autor describe el matrimonio en desintegración de los Wheeler. Evitando los riesgos de la caricatura obvia o del moralismo patente, el señor Yates escoge el camino más difícil de permitir que sus personajes se revelen por sí solos, lo cual hacen con una intensidad que provoca la compasión del lector, así como su interés." Martin Levin.

  The film is showing at the Arteplex in Buenos Aires, Pte R. Saenz Peña 1150. 4382 7934. http://cinesarteplex.com