Sam Mendes
Revolutionary Road

Sam Mendes acts as a psychologist and analyzes the interpersonal relationships between Frank and April Wheeler. A very ordinary middle-class family, with two children, well settled in the charming house on Revolutionary Road. It's a canonical family unit, nothing out of the ordinary. But as is known in a couple's relationship, inevitably sooner or later conflicts arise. April wants a different life, far from the daily life within her four walls, far from the annoyance of neighbors. Frank engages in a sordid affair, trying to escape a job that doesn't satisfy him. Days pass monotonously, amidst quarrels and barely concealed investigative looks, until April decides to turn the page and announces to Frank the desire to relocate to Paris, a city her husband visited in the past. It is a futile attempt to break the bonds of an overly stereotyped existence, a vain attempt at escape.

"Revolutionary Road" would seem to be a typical family melodrama, and at least it starts that way, only to constantly evolve, creating fragile psychological plots that intertwine. The two protagonists, who have the likeness of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, loved each other and probably still have feelings, which they can no longer fully express. Theirs is a normal existence, and precisely because of this, it's "anomalous" to their eyes. They don't simply want to live in the tranquility of their white house; they want to seek something that truly makes them happy, that can rekindle the spark that's now dimmed. No one seems to be close to their way of feeling the world, except the disturbed John (played by an extraordinary Michael Shannon). In John's disarticulated mental functions lies the real difficulty of the two. Their now-destroyed marriage is put to the test by John in one of the most dramatic scenes of the film. A seemingly calm dinner that culminates in total breakdown, where each has proof of their mental state.

What really makes Mendes' work thought-provoking, beyond the surfacing benevolence in various points, is the raw and honest realization that the story of Frank and April is an everyday story, one that is lived daily in almost every family's home. Richard Yates had written about it in the eponymous book from which the film was adapted, setting the story in the fifties, but what was true fifty years ago is still true today. Every day, turning on the TV, you hear about family quarrels that end in tragedy, lives broken by jealousy.

Mendes places emphasis on the psychology of the characters and shows us vividly and slowly that the perfection of life is pure illusion. However, the Wheelers are incapable of understanding it, or perhaps they don't want to, happier in self-harming one another than in finding a true solution to it all. Tragedy is therefore inevitable, despite futile attempts to avoid it. It's a tragedy born of misunderstandings and anxieties, of problems unaddressed.

Mendes' fourth feature is an analysis of normality, of the destruction of the utopia of a happy life. The pursuit of happiness is impossible, a chimera destined to remain so. "Revolutionary Road" is thus primarily a sentimental film about the impossibility of experiencing real feelings. However, Mendes lingers too much on the contrasts between the two spouses. The film, while faithfully adhering to Yates' work, ends up being at times too modern, and at times too forced, with scenes stretched out, dialogues that become nothing more than fierce exchanges of differing opinions. It is thus a work that strays from its true objective and, rather than becoming a critique of modern families and their inability to accept what they have, it becomes "merely" a representation of Yates' book.

The dim photography by Roger Deakins and the soft musical evolutions curated by Thomas Newman (who will also create the soundtrack for another family drama like Brothers) complement this work which, starting as yet another romantic crisis, strays too far from these tracks and paradoxically loses effectiveness in wanting to forcibly dwell on a relationship already understood as worn out after just half an hour.

The drama of today's world.