Revolutionary Road

The famous couple of Titanic are the same couple in this movie too. There they played a naive couple, madly in love, ready to die for each other. In this movie they play a married couple, full of hate and dreading each other’s presence.

This movie starts with a glance into Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April’s (Kate Winslet) life. Frank works in an advertising agency and April is a part-time actor and housewife. They also have two kids. They are a typical urban couple. But, somehow everyone else finds them to be a special, perfect couple. Little do they know the truth about this marriage.

These two are faced with every employee’s nightmare: dissatisfaction. Frank is troubled with an unsuitable job and April with a failed career in acting (which is her dream job). Finding no other medium, they vent out their frustration on each other and blame the marriage as an obstacle to a happy life. Often, during fights, they lose their senses and unconsciously become very mean to each other. Until… April gets a fantastic idea. She wants them to discontinue this meaningless life, sell off their current possessions and start afresh in Paris (a city of opportunity and excitement). Sure, it won’t improve their personal compatibility but that idea doesn’t strike them. She believes it could be a new beginning for them both. They both agree and decide to execute the plan. But this plan only lingers for a short time as does a mirage. Their dream is shattered when Frank is offered a promotion.

Frank gets too greedy and he convinces himself that he could have a good life after this promotion right here. Just in time, he discovers that April is pregnant, though she is willing to abort the child so that they can execute their plan. Frank uses this as a veil for his greed and cancels their Paris plans. He manipulates April by calling her a heartless mother, which convinces her to stay back and have the child.

But April has waded so far in this river of hope that going back to the old life is as impossible as going forward with her plan. She gets stuck in a permanent state of trauma; continuing her old life, but as a nightmare. Later, she is too overcome by grief and takes a drastic action, which sends their lives down a landslide.

Though many of us were surprised at the extremity of the fights and thought it was a unique case, it isn’t really so. Most urban couples earn money individually and are financially independent. So, they have no fear of angering their partner or leaving them. But in most of our families, only one of the partners earn. So the other partner can’t afford to leave them, resulting in less extreme fights. That’s why divorces in rural areas are less frequent than in cities.

We owe a lot of thanks to Sam Mendes, the director of this movie. It gave us a very accurate description of real marriages. I recommend this movie to all teenagers and adults who can take advice from this movie and make wiser marital choices in the future.