Revolutionary Road arrived in December 2008 carrying the weight of a reunion. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who had last shared a screen in Titanic eleven years earlier, were cast as Frank and April Wheeler, a couple in mid-1950s Connecticut who cannot stand the life they have built. Sam Mendes directed. Justin Haythe wrote the screenplay from Richard Yates’s 1961 novel. The film runs 119 minutes.
Trailer, via HBO Max.
Frank Wheeler at Knox Machines
The premise is a trap the movie sets carefully. Frank works a sales job at Knox Machines that he hates. April wanted to be an actress and is not successful at it. They live at 115 Revolutionary Road with two children, and to everyone around them they look like the perfect couple. They are not.
Mendes and Haythe spend the first act building that gap between appearance and fact. The neighbors are Milly and Shep Campbell, played by Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour. The realtor is Helen Givings, played by Kathy Bates, who had also appeared in Titanic with DiCaprio and Winslet. Bates’s Helen is a small role that carries a lot of the movie’s social machinery.
April’s Plan to Move to Paris
April’s idea is to move to Paris so Frank can find the passion he never discovered. He balks at first, then agrees. For a stretch, the Wheelers tell people about the plan, and the movie is briefly about possibility.
Then it closes. Frank gets a promotion offer. April gets pregnant again. Frank finds out she is thinking about an abortion, and the argument that follows is the film’s center. April says they had their second child only to prove the first was not a mistake. That line does more work than any speech in the movie, and Winslet plays it without softening it.
Frank takes the promotion. He tries to settle into the life he has. The Paris plan dies quietly, which is worse than if it had died loudly.
John Givings and the Institution
The best performance in Revolutionary Road belongs to Michael Shannon, who plays John Givings, Helen’s son. John has been in a psychiatric institution. Helen asks April and Frank to meet him, thinking the younger couple might help him. April agrees.
John is the only character who understands why the Wheelers want to leave. He is also the only character who says what he sees, which is why the movie uses him sparingly. Shannon earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the 81st Academy Awards for the role. The film received three Oscar nominations in total.
Shep Campbell at the Jazz Bar
Late in the movie, after an evening at a jazz bar with the Campbells, Shep and April end up alone. She tells him about her depression over the canceled Paris plans and about her life in general. The two have sex. The scene is not a twist. It is the logical end of two people who have been failing to say true things to each other for years.
David Harbour plays Shep as a man who has been waiting. That reading makes the scene land harder than it would if Shep were simply a plot device.
Thomas Newman’s Score
The score is by Thomas Newman, his fourth collaboration with Mendes. Newman’s music does not push. It sits under the film and lets the silences work.
The Titanic angle is the marketing hook, and it is also the thing most likely to mislead a viewer. DiCaprio and Winslet are not playing lovers who find each other. They are playing lovers who found each other and then stopped. The film is about the stopping.
What the Film Gets Right, and Where It Drags
The production design and the restraint are the strengths. Mendes does not sentimentalize the suburbs, and he does not make Frank and April martyrs. Frank is weak in specific ways. April is cruel in specific ways. The movie lets both be true. Haythe’s screenplay trusts the audience to notice what the characters will not say.
The weakness is pacing. The film’s middle stretch repeats its own argument about escape and resignation more than it needs to. At 119 minutes, some of that time could go. The other limitation is that Frank never becomes as legible as April. DiCaprio plays him well, but the script gives Winslet the sharper material.
Revolutionary Road is a serious film that mostly earns its seriousness. It was released in the United States on December 26, 2008, by Paramount Pictures, and it grossed more than $79.5 million worldwide.
Here is the order of what actually matters in it:
- Michael Shannon as John Givings, the one character who says what he sees.
- Kate Winslet as April, whose argument about the second child is the film’s center.
- The Paris plan, which drives the movie and then dies quietly.
- Thomas Newman’s score, which stays out of the way.
- The Titanic reunion, which sells tickets and explains nothing.
Key Numbers
- Release date: December 26, 2008 (United States)
- Distributor: Paramount Pictures
- Runtime: 119 minutes
- Worldwide gross: more than $79.5 million
- Academy Award nominations: 3, including Best Supporting Actor for Michael Shannon
- Source novel: Richard Yates, 1961
Revolutionary Road is a good film about two people who cannot say what they mean. It is not a great one, because it says some of it for them. Shannon’s John Givings is the part that lasts. The Paris plan is the part that drags. The argument about the second child is the part that hurts. If you want the version of this story that cuts deepest, read Yates. If you want the performances, watch the film. The gap between those two recommendations is exactly where the score sits.
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