So I watched this yesterday. If you do want to see the movie - DON'T READ THIS!!
For those of you who don't want to sit through it - here it is in a nutshell.
Kate and Leo meet and fall in love. They have 2 kids and move to the suburbs (a cute little house on Revolutionary Road) where Leo works for a big corporate company in a cubicle. He hates his job. Kate's a stuggling actress. Their marriage is strained and they fight all the time. He cheats on Kate. Kate thinks that moving to Paris will save things and for a while it does. None of their friends understand why they hate the suburbs and why they'd want to move to Paris. The only guy that understands and sees what's going on is their neighbor's crazy son home from the war (AMAZING performance by Michael Shannon who is slowly becoming one of my favorite actors). Everything is sun shiny and roses with thoughts of moving to Paris until, in the heat of their happiness (for a few minutes, and on the kitchen counter) Kate gets pregnant. They start fighting again, she suggests DIY abortion, he gets mad. Back at work, he gets offered a big promotion and ends up taking it. Kate sees their life not grand and moving to Paris, but "the American dream", married, 2.5 kids, in the burbs. She's bored and was meant to be something special. She acts out by gettin' it on with a neighbor friend in a car after dancing. More fighting at home, the crazy guy is over for dinner one night and calls them out on some stuff, hits nerves. She runs away to think. The next morning, after making Leo breakfast, she ends up doing the DIY abortion and kills herself in the process leaving Leo and the kids to fend for themselves. The neighbors talk about how great & tragic the young Wheeler couple (Kate & Leo) on Revolutionary Road were. The people that saw them as a bright happy couple refuse to talk about them or listen to anything bad said about them. The crazy guy's dad is listening to his wife blather on about The Wheelers negatively, so he turns his hearing aid down and just listens to the quiet.
And they all lived happily ever after.
I love Sam Mendes movies. The endings are always so lovely and thought provoking.
1 comment:
I think it was a really good movie and Kate Winslet has to be one of the best female actresses on the planet. The movie is based on the novel by Richard Yates, by the way.
I wonder if all the smoking men did in the 50's directly affected their sexual prowess...or lack thereof. Those were 3-5 stroke sex scenes.
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