Oh, for god's sake - guess who's ruining Revolutionary Road?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Road_%28film%29

How I loathe Kate "Who Sucked All The Lemons?" Winslet.

I was going to guess Ethan Hawke.

Shannon's my friend -- he's going to be the Christopher Walken of the 2020s.

The literary classic will be adapted by Justin Haythe and then raped by Sam Mendes.

i wonder how long that'll stay on wikipedia.

One man's truth is another man's "POV vandalism" I suppose.

GAH

Yates biographer speaks out

Trailer has been out for a while - any actor from Mad Men would have made a better Frank Wheeler, by the look of it.

it is pretty ridiculous not just getting the mad men cast to do this

sam mendes could make a film about link wray and still smear piano all over it

It's a mixed bag. And the Mad Men allusions above are just fucking lazy. "oooooh, hats!"

SPOILERS ETC BUT YOU ALL READ THE BOOK

ha ha.
it is a mixed bag. i kind of liked it, but it seemed to be framed like one of those complicated-relationship baumbach movies, starting with the malcontent husband, focusing on the downfall rather than the malaise. and winslet didn't really have the fire of april, the kind of straight, confident strength - i always thought april seemed exasperated rather than emotional. leo was really great, though, and the film shifted well through the cycles of changing decisions, etc.

i thought the ending was kinda ham-fisted - it seemed like the last fifth of the film was string laden passages of a stoic and tearful april, making everything patently obvious. mmm.

it was a little like watching office space, too, in being fresh with the smell of soul destroying office work.

Mediocre movie on the whole, but performance-for-performance, better than American Beauty.

Just finished watching this; I loved the final shot as a commentary on how we cope with relationships over the course of years. The final scene with the 'insane' son of Kathy Bates worked well as a meta discussion on what had just happened between the Wheelers. Acting was a bit wooden in parts.

Should I read the book? Is there much of a plot difference?

the book's amazing!, so yes. it's kind of framed differently. plotwise in the same, but i guess predictably the book's way more psychological. there are these heartbreaking little nuggets. like i kept thinking about the bit where the guy next door hugs his wife.

i agree on the film btw- those two moments did work pretty well as analogues of what was going on, and the last shot was bold. at least when he was first introduced, i thought the neighbours' son was maybe slightly less a jarring insertion than he was in the book.

There was definitely something missing from this. I actually thought DiCaprio was better than I expected but I realized afterwards that I didn't ever care about any of the characters one way or another.

caring about characters... sooo 19th century. ;)

They're horrible people and you're supposed to find them so.

i dont think the mad men comparison is that shallow, the creator of mad men has said that the book captured a lot of what he was trying to do w/ the tv show

That may be true, but they're not precisely the same era -- there's significant sociological daylight btwn 1955 and 1962.

I don't think the comparison to Mad Men is that far-fetched. 1955 has more in common with '60-'62 than with 1950 in some ways (post McCarthy/Korea) and the most distinctive part of the '60's for me doesn't start till '64 or '65.

They're horrible people and you're supposed to find them so.

But that's my point. I sensed I was supposed to empathize but kind of despise them and instead I didn't give a shit about anyone in the movie except for a faint glimmer of pity for Shep Campbell.

dicaprio was real good in this; notably so when paris put a spring in his step, but in conveying the changing moods and decisions, and looking like a little boy grown up whenever he was rumbled or denied. winslet was too emotional, but overall better as it went on. did any of you relate to characters in the book but not in the film? i think i had sympathy for april because she seemed like the one who had married young and foolish and grown out of it, whereas he'd remained the same. in the novel there wasn't spite to her pronouncements that she didn't love him, which had some sting in the film.

So anyway, that car scene. I loved the way it subverted the car scene from Titanic. There it was Kate + Leo having this smoldering romance in a car, but we only saw it from the outside. Here it's as though we could see into that car, and the revelation is that it isn't even Leo but someone else - and it's something gross, and crude, and unfulfilling. The hand isn't Winslet's - it's a guy trying to hold his balance. Lots of people have talked about how this is the opposite relationship to the one in Titanic (the hot, passionate love V. the long, slow breakdown), but there's also a Marxist critique in here that I think is also subverting Titanic. There, the car is a symbol of wealth and the sex scene is corrupting the car. Leo is bringing Kate down from her upper-class background down to his romanticized proletariat status. Tho that is obv. done very weakly, the car scene is them trampling on this bourgeois symbol. By contrast, this critique is so much heavier, so much angrier and I think so much more powerful. The disillusionment of the bourgeois lifestyle - and the toll it takes on the intellectual/artist. (I think besides the car scene, the opener, and some of the final scenes, the most amazing scene in the film is when the other couple is talking about the immaturity of the Paris trip and the woman starts crying hysterically.) This is a much more brutal, Adorno critique of Capitalism -- the love cannot resist the hegemony. It will absolutely destroy and corrupt everything. There is no scrappy kid to save you from your old wealth family. You are going to just be destroyed.

(This is a little out there, but if the car is a vehicle from Titanic where the romance is carried, and here that car has been invaded by an interloper, the adulterer. Similarly, the baby in the womb becomes an interloper, a way to destroy the hopes of going to Paris and escaping this life. The car, which should be a symbol of transportation, becomes this symbol of being parked, being held back. Kate's only way of dealing with that is to miscarry; if the car is a carriage, she has to miscarriage, to totally destroy the vehicle with the interloper. Her auto-annihilation is the consequence of this corrupting influence.)

Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I think it's one of the best films of the year. Bleak + depressing as hell, but enormous and powerful.

Also, it's a clever twist that Kathy Bates was Leo's liaison to high society in Titanic, and here (as the real estate developer) she's the liaison to bourgeois society. Very Virgel-esque.

but it seemed to be framed like one of those complicated-relationship baumbach movies, starting with the malcontent husband, focusing on the downfall rather than the malaise.

^yah this. it was ok. some ugh mendes moments & some lol fight club-ish dialogue. also the recurring piano note score was so awful. i would def smash zoe k btw

I really liked this. didnt expect to. I hate american beauty.

but this was pretty powerful. my 62 year old father saw it with me and he said it reminded him of his parents...not that extreme, just the crushing banalities of work and family...he remembers them having conversations like in the movie (more like "how are we supposed to pay for this?" than "you're not man!" i should stress...)

Anyway...not perfect, and probably most of the effectiveness can be traced back to yates. I liked the subdued pastels and performances as well. like it's supposed to be colorful and pretty but it's not, it's muted.

lol fight club-ish dialogue.

i think this was intentional? in any case, their descriptions of "really feeling things" is often so cliched as to suggest they never HAVE felt real things. it's just an idea of "realness" they are pursuing...i imagine this is better handled in the novel though, where an authorial voice can more explicitly point this out.

overheard a pretty funny exchange about this the other day

girl1: oh btw do NOT see revolutionary road
girl2: why's that?
girl1: not AT ALL like titanic!
girl2: :o

the crowd i was with seemed to hate it! lots of nervous laughter...trying REALLY hard to find some sort of satire of 50s mores i guess...like the only way to relate to that era is through mocking it's propriety and cuteness?

anyway morbius said: "They're horrible people and you're supposed to find them so."

i found myself vacillating between sympathizing and being exasperated by them--my father pointed out to me that just a generation before people had experienced the great depression and were keenly aware of the frailty of what they did have. they knew how fall they could fall, and so taking risks and chucking everything was much harder to do. to find yourself trapped in a house and marriage and unhappy was YOUR fault for not appreciating it.

i'm having trouble mustering up the enthusiasm to see this, since it seems farfetched that mendes could illuminate the morbidity of human existence any more than he's already tried. the idea of another study of the incredible insignificance of the individual does not appeal to me.

well his source material certainly seems superior to past attempts!

anyway morbius said: "They're horrible people and you're supposed to find them so."

Maybe, but the way the movie's directed, I can't imagine anyone watching it and not siding with April.

hmm...honestly i felt it was sort of strange that, after she realizes she's a bad actress, she expects her husband to "find himself" and become something, anything, great. he always has a more realistic point of view: "maybe im just not anything special" or something like that. i dont really feel like I should condescend to him for accepting that (which strikes me as a sense of maturity). though i guess a lot of the plot hinges on whether Frank is coward or realistic.

I just finished this on audiobook and thought it was absolutely superb. Definitely the best thing that I've heard on that format. So now not entirely sure whether I'm looking forward to seeing the film or not.

I guess the bit about April expecting Frank to find himself is a bit strange, maybe it's just more selfishness in her substituting her own no.2 fantasy for failed no.1 fantasy and expecting him to tag along. I liked that he did develop a sort of maturity, not particularly through realising his limitations (he never loses the childish contempt for everyone and everything else), but just in the simple adult finding of satisfaction through work. But him not being honest about that is definitely cowardly.

this was utterly, completely shut out of the oscars, wasn't it?

Other than
Shannon's my friend -- he's going to be the Christopher Walken of the 2020s.
― Eazy, Friday, June 1, 2007 6:38 AM (1 year ago)

But, yeah, it opened wide this weekend with the idea of the tailwind of Oscar nominations. Bet it won't be in theaters for much longer.

slightly too good for Oscar.

it got a best supporting actor nomination

and some others, cinematography maybe

I am still looking forward to it; I think DiCaprio and Winslet are the most glorious screen couple!

finally got to see it today. not the detail of the book but that's to be expected, as is mendes' sheen. but i thought it brought home the rawness of the arguing. and the 'whose story is it' element which is obfuscated in the book as well as the film, the male's or the female's. in the book there is the line on his way home from his first session with the secretary, something like 'he knew what it felt like to be a real man'. in the film they keep april's line about him being 'the best possible thing in the world: a man'. so is it about him failing to live up to something or her failing to see that was the wrong issue...

haven't checked back on the book yet but i didn't think he told the secretary it was his birthday. i remember reading the end of that chapter and being utterly shocked when he gets to the front door and april's all dressed up and the kids are there. the film didn't create the same impact but still gets the effect nicely done.

and the final john givings sequence was brutal. nice touch to keep him out of focus in the doorway on his final rant while we see april's face hardly flinching, until he drops into focus for the 'the one person i know i don't want to be...' very powerful.

It was not bad at all, considering the other crap that got lionized this season.

Shannon is quite good in Shotgun Stories (the lead).

did they give Winslet an Oscar for her work in this, rather than what she was nominated for? My wife claims "yes" as she actually saw the Reader and thought it was bah.

combo, plus "hey she's been around and now she's whining"

michael shannon was great.

I was very disappointed in this. It was one of the few Hollywood movies I've seen all year, and it didn't make me feel like I was missing anything. I think it had great costumes and set design, but DiCaprio and Winslet both seemed so wrong. Kate more so than Leo--I just kept thinking how much better January Jones would have been in the part (sorry, another Mad Men reference). Leo was at least believable as a character, though not the character I had imagined from the book. The movie has even managed to somewhat ruin the book for me--not when I think of RR I think epic Hollywood attempt at a movie, rather than wonderful book. Loved the Wheelers mid-century Scandinavian living room though.

It was one of the few Hollywood movies I've seen all year, and it didn't make me feel like I was missing anything.

Revolutionary Road was far from the best of Hollywood this year.

It was not bad at all, considering the other crap that got lionized this season

True, and I can't say much of anything else other than thinking Leo was more effective here than in any other film; he nails the book's conception of Frank Wheeler as a spoiled man-child. The two big fights that bookend the film have the right rhythms too.

This is basically my favorite Leo perf I've seen this decade.

I've liked Leo a lot this decade. Also, I think Revolutionary Road is the only film off-hand from last year that has grown on me since I first saw it, and not looked worse in hindsight.

wait, so did we guess? which one ruined the film? my bet's on michael shannon.

He played the Crazy Suburbanite Who Espouses Deep Truths that's a staple of this kind of film (eg what's-his-name from Little Children) and was kinda charmless.

Mad Men ruined this film.

Yes.

Finally saw this. Good, but only insofar as it reminded me of the book, I think. Very expressive cinematography. But I'm not sure if, absent the book, I'd have understood lots of the careful subtleties of interactions between the characters -- only watching it on the screen did I really get how incredibly much goes on in the emotional lives of all the players, and not just the lead couple. Which means, I suppose, that there's a denseness to the plotting that I never appreciated, vis a vis Yates' other stuff where only a few characters get any flesh to them at all (excepting Cold Springs Harbor, which is... wow oh man).

Saw this yesterday. Liked it a lot, but I'm thinking maybe I ought to read the book now.

i liked the movie too, its quite faithful to the book and i read the book well before i saw the movie.