Sam Mendes is a man on a mission. He intends to seek and capture beauty everywhere. Even in the most melancholy situations, in stories that drip despair, Mendes contends that the beauty lies simply in the fact that the situations exist. American Beauty was a masterpiece. But it was also obvious. The ending of the movie, where the fleeting protagonist offers universal redemption, lifts the pall of gloom that desperately needs lifting and concludes that all of human activity is nothing but a series of beautiful actions, irrespective of the emotion attached to it.There is no such reprieve in Revolutionary Road. The director provides no escape route from the brutal mental hammering that the movie is bound to inflict. There is no benevolent voice of hope that promises answers or eventual peace. In RR, Mendes revisits american suburbia of the 50's, an especially conservative and domestically trying time for the american people. diCaprio and Winslet are a married couple who move to a suburb in hopes of reigniting their rapidly failing marriage. Caprio is stuck in a job he has no love for, while Winslet, a failed actress, finds her dreams of living an exciting life slowly slip by as she spends her days tending to her home and children. The future looks bleak till Winslet suggests that they take life into their own hands, and move to Paris, as Caprio had always dreamt of. There is an especially touching scene, where Winslet tries to convince her hesitant husband why she has any faith in his ability to live life beyond the ordinary. 'Dont you know?', she says holding him close, 'its because you're the most beautiful thing in the world. You are a Man.'
What happens next forms the remainder of the movie, swaying from periods of joy and hope to despair and tragedy. It is the above scene between the husband and wife however, that sums up the movie for me. While Winslet believes that they are meant to be something 'special', Caprio himself has no such illusions and only flirts with the idea. It is this conflict, between what could be, and what is, that threatens to destroy not only their marriage, but the fabric of their existence. It is barely ironic that the only person who calls them out on their silent pretense of a marriage is a social pariah and an implied lunatic(a brilliant Michael Shannon). What gives the viewer the shivers is how easy it is to relate to either of the characters. You WILL relate to one of them. A few will to both. And thats the genius of what Mendes has achieved here. In this relentlessly repressing story, he manages to effuse a sense of beauty simply by tearing the curtain away and presenting you with the truth. And the truth, no matter how dark, no matter how tragic, is always this. Its always beautiful.
