Revolutionary Road is heavy stuff but Winslet and DiCaprio excel

Jan 29 2009 Film reviews by Graham Young and Roz Laws

Revolutionary Road * * * * *
Cert 15 119 mins
British director Sam Mendes lays the ghost of wartime drama Jarhead to rest with a blistering return to domestic troubles.

Recalling the heights he scaled with Oscar-winning debut, American Beauty, this is the dangerously-topical story of a couple torn between the challenges of standing still or trying to move on.

Like many family men, Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) is trying to keep a roof over the head of his wife April (Kate Winslet) and their two children.

He’s achieved nothing more with his life than to follow his father into a rather unfulfilling office career.

But April, a frustrated wannabe actress, is made of sterner stuff.

Sensing the opportunity to move to Paris with a well-paid secretarial job, she offers Frank the chance to quit the rat race. Even in the movies, life is never that easy.

And, in the post-War America of the 50s, Frank is under pressure on three fronts. First from himself, and then from the people who know him – colleagues and neighbours like Shep (David Harbour) and Milly Campbell (Kathryn Hahn).

Sure he could go to Paris. But if he’s not the breadwinner, how will he handle the situation and will April earn enough?

If he’s all mouth and no trousers, dare he risk the resentment of failure or pitfalls of discovering more about the person he might become?

Adapted by Justin Haythe from the 1961 novel by the late Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road questions whether the nation’s inspirational spirit of 1776 reached a dead end in 50s Connecticut.

Barack Obama’s current attempt to recreate a ‘can do’ attitude is just one modern reflection of Yates’ drama.

So too are the fears of mass unemployment returning to Brown’s Britain and, with it, the potential for many of us to oil our rusting Norman Tebbit bikes.

Revolutionary Road was shot mostly in the Wheelers’ house on the street which gives the film its title.

The art direction and costume design are so good they’ve been rewarded with Oscar nominations.

Just like best supporting actor nominee Michael Shannon (Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead).

His admirably-restrained role as the potentially unstable John Givings bears strong echoes of Jackie Earle Haley’s Oscar-nominated performance as a suspected paedophile in Kate Winslet’s last American drama, Little Children (2006) – a film in which she also had an unlikely sex scene not a million miles from her kitchen cooker.

Variations on an evolutionary theme, then.

That this is Winslet and DiCaprio’s first film together in the 11 years since Titanic established itself as the world’s highest grossing movie is incidental.

Both stars have moved on considerably since those heady days and this is much more of a weighty Play for Today than an action-fuelled Hollywood blockbuster.

The cinematography is worth savouring, though, thanks to Torquay’s Roger Deakins. He has just been nominated at the Oscars for the eighth time for The Reader.

To date he has yet to be successful and, should he finally be rewarded this year, he’ll even have to share his prize with Chris Menges (The Killing Fields/The Mission).

The Academy members really should put Deakins ouf of his ‘misery’. Like Wheeler himself, he needs to move on.
Graham Young

Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist * * *
Cert 12A 89 mins
Michael Cera’s been an actor for ten years, but people only really started noticing him when he starred as the sweet and unassuming dad-to-be in last year’s teen hit Juno.

Now he’s playing much the same role in a similar film, which charms but never really takes off – or makes us laugh quite as much as Juno.

He is the Nick of the title, well-matched to co-star Kat Dennings as Norah.

The film begins with Nick being dumped by his girlfriend of six months, bitchy and selfish Tris (Alexis Dziena). Unable to accept it’s over, he keeps making her mix tapes of his favourite music and leaving them on her doorstep.

Tris scornfully throws them in the bin, from where they are rescued by her classmate Norah who appreciates his taste.

“She doesn’t know what she gave up,” says Norah about Nick, who she’s never met but is half in love with already.

Nick’s gay friends try to drag him out of his depression by taking him out, with the promise of seeing his favourite band. The enigmatic Where’s Fluffy are a cult underground group who don’t publicise their gigs and force fans to follow clues to where they might be playing.

Also out partying are Tris and Norah. Tris taunts her about her lack of a boyfriend, so she picks on a random stranger in the bar and starts kissing him, pretending he is her new man.

Surprise, surprise, it’s Nick. Yet Norah isn’t exactly thrilled to meet him – “I just made out with Tris’s sloppy seconds” is her first reaction.

It’s up to Nick’s friends to play Cupid, perform a makeover on Norah and push them together. The film follows them as they drive around New York, trying to find Norah’s drunken friend and the Where’s Fluffy gig.

The city backdrop adds a certain style to proceedings and the eclectic soundtrack goes from Dusty Springfield to Hot Chocolate via Vampire Weekend. Some lines are sharp and the actors amiable, especially Cera as the geeky yet cool Nick.

Sweet and romantic, it has some nice moments but they don’t add up to a classic movie.
Roz Laws