Revolutionary Road. (15.)
Directed by Sam Mendes.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, David Harbour, Kathryn Hahn, Michael Shannon. 119 mins
The final entry in this season’s roll of Oscar Pleaders is that Academy staple the adaptation of the high brow literary work. Given who is involved it’s no surprise that this is a piece of quality cinema; that it is actually any good though is a definite twist. The film is better that I thought it would be before going in and better that I though would be while I was watching it.
Can’t say I have ever read Richard Yates's novel about the slow disillusionment of a couple in 50s American suburbia but I’d say an element of it is the idea that marriage is a matter of finding someone you love and then slowly crushing all the life out of them, which is usually a fair representation of the process of literary adaptation.
Mendes telling of the story of the Wheelers - a shining couple who see themselves as a bit better than other people and try to escape from the stifling nature of life in the suburbs - seems to offer up any number of dull avenues to disappear up but it keeps steering past them and slowly accumulating a tragic power. Like the performances, the film is most effective in its more muted moments; the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf shouting matches are things you have to get through.
Ten years on the film reunites Titanic pair - after Rhett and Scarlett cinema’s most popular romantic couple - and they are a much better match now. On the sinking boat she seemed so much wiser and livelier that it seemed like cradle snatching. They are about on a par now though I think ultimately she still has the edge. They have children but then never seem to be there. They are wheeled out occasionally like those of an embattled politician for a photo opportunity
Leo isn’t playing an action martyr which is a nice change. Early on there was an alarming moment when it seems he may have turned into Tom Cruise, all second hand pyrotechnics and not a human emotion among them. But he pulls back from that and is actually really rather good here though it is very noticeable that, when he needs to turn nasty, he starts channelling Jack Nicholson.
He, and the film as a whole, aren’t helped by how much they tread on the toes of the TV series Mad Men. The setting is maybe half a decade earlier but the non-stop smoking, the drinking, the outfits are all just identical and that you thinking that, though DiCaprio is good in the perceived big screen way, mightn’t the film have been more interesting with Jon Hamm in the lead.
Revolutionary Road. (15.)
Directed by Sam Mendes.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, David Harbour, Kathryn Hahn, Michael Shannon. 119 mins
The final entry in this season’s roll of Oscar Pleaders is that Academy staple the adaptation of the high brow literary work. Given who is involved it’s no surprise that this is a piece of quality cinema; that it is actually any good though is a definite twist. The film is better that I thought it would be before going in and better that I though would be while I was watching it.
Can’t say I have ever read Richard Yates's novel about the slow disillusionment of a couple in 50s American suburbia but I’d say an element of it is the idea that marriage is a matter of finding someone you love and then slowly crushing all the life out of them, which is usually a fair representation of the process of literary adaptation.
Mendes telling of the story of the Wheelers - a shining couple who see themselves as a bit better than other people and try to escape from the stifling nature of life in the suburbs - seems to offer up any number of dull avenues to disappear up but it keeps steering past them and slowly accumulating a tragic power. Like the performances, the film is most effective in its more muted moments; the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf shouting matches are things you have to get through.
Ten years on the film reunites Titanic pair - after Rhett and Scarlett cinema’s most popular romantic couple - and they are a much better match now. On the sinking boat she seemed so much wiser and livelier that it seemed like cradle snatching. They are about on a par now though I think ultimately she still has the edge. They have children but then never seem to be there. They are wheeled out occasionally like those of an embattled politician for a photo opportunity
Leo isn’t playing an action martyr which is a nice change. Early on there was an alarming moment when it seems he may have turned into Tom Cruise, all second hand pyrotechnics and not a human emotion among them. But he pulls back from that and is actually really rather good here though it is very noticeable that, when he needs to turn nasty, he starts channelling Jack Nicholson.
He, and the film as a whole, aren’t helped by how much they tread on the toes of the TV series Mad Men. The setting is maybe half a decade earlier but the non-stop smoking, the drinking, the outfits are all just identical and that you thinking that, though DiCaprio is good in the perceived big screen way, mightn’t the film have been more interesting with Jon Hamm in the lead.
