No Ordinary Fool

I remember a veteran BBC journalist once talking about his experiences of interviewing couples upon their silver or golden wedding anniversaries. When asked how they had managed to sustain their relationship for so long, the invariable answer that came back was “being able to give and take a little”. In the closing scene of Revolutionary Road, the long-suffering Howard Givings (Richard Easton) quietly turns down the volume on his hearing-aid, as his wife Helen (Kathy Bates) starts off on another of her interminable exposés on the Wheeler family. It is an imperfect solution to an imperfect situation, but a life together has been made possible thanks, in part, to Howard figuring out ways to tolerate Helen’s many mind-numbing monologues.

In a neighbouring house, April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) has spent seven years of married life in the hope of a promise never made. Having fallen firstly in love and then pregnant, she has seen her dreams for the life less ordinary atrophy in the claustrophobic conformity that is the suburbs. In Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), she thought that she had found “the most interesting man that she had ever met”. Now, she fears that he too has grown to despise their life together, as he endures the mediocrity of being just another office worker in order to support their young family. In a moment of despair and desparation, she is suddenly inspired by the idea of escaping this life once and for all. The whole family, she decides, shall go to Paris to live. She will become the bread-winner and Frank shall have the freedom to discover what he really wants to do with his life.

Frank does not wish to be hurtful towards his wife. Yet, he is often insincere in what he says to her, partially out of love and partially to avoid being on the wrong side of her pent-up anger again. When they argue, it is he who is the one trying to bring matters to a head in order to try and resolve them. Worse, seeing her unbridled enthusiasm for Paris, Frank’s lack of backbone means that he swallows his misgivings at her harebrained scheme and even puts on a good front of also looking forward to their new life. However, the truth is that Frank no longer dreads his job all that much and is finding pleasure and comfort in being a conventional family man. Yet it is because of unspoken tensions such as these, that marriages cease to crumble away slowly and become fully-fledged cave-ins instead.

The rest of the film sees the temporary sticky plaster of a life in Paris ruthlessly ripped away, leaving the open wound that is now their relationship to fester. Blazing rows and long silences ensue and, if things are not bad enough, in walks the emotionally deficient John Givings (Michael Shannon), son of Howard and Helen, to ruthlessly expose the weaknesses and inadequacies of both of them. His unthinking and unrestrained intervention has all of the impact of an A-bomb on this nuclear family. The resulting sequence of events will chill many in the audience to the marrow.

It is unlikely that DiCaprio has ever given a performance that has been quite as intense as this one. Laughter, cockiness, excitement, confusion, rage, despair, grief, fear, and cowardice are all vividly represented in his portrayal of Frank. On the other hand, Winslet plays April with an eeriely calm detachment that masks a torrent of tumultuous emotions underneath. A manipulative and selfish dreamer who sees the world in ways that both frighten and inspire, April seems to be learning how to accept herself as the film progresses. However, with her rediscovered self-confidence comes a fierce and destructive determination.

However, this is not a film about who is right or wrong in this relationship. Both can see the merit in the other’s point of view. For Frank, there is a sense of guilt that he has somehow failed the woman that he loves. For April, she senses the whimsy in her plan and that Frank is just trying to do right by his family. In this sense, they need not even be viewed as two separate people. Rather they are the yin and yang that exists in many parents – the enormous sense of duty and responsibility born of love for their children, the shrill scream for the personal freedom that has been lost, and the dream that is eating the forbidden fruit that is to still live one’s life regardless.

Richard Yates’ novel is a cold and hard assessment about the “hopeless emptiness” that is conformity and the dangerous desire that is wanting to be free. Yet the Wheelers are nothing particularly special. They merely bought into a delusion that made them think so. In this film adaptation, director Sam Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe stay loyal to Yates’ dispassionate portrayal of a mundane woman who fervently wants something greater from her life and the man who is ultimately found to be standing in her way. The belated but deserved arrival of this sad and serious work on the silver screen may make its themes seem unoriginal to modern audiences. At the same time, seeing as how so many relationships do not have happy-ever-after outcomes, it is always hugely refreshing to see Hollywood acknowledge this simple truth on occassion.