Monthly Archive: May 2009

America had won World War II, becoming the first true Super Power of the 20th Century. But with it came a price and that was a desperate desire among the populace to preserve their freedom through an amazing sense of conformity. Being different was seen as being un-American and you were likely to be accused of being a Communist, which had replaced being a Nazi as the vilest kind of person.

The spread of television and the broadcaster’s desire to present a harmonious vision of an ideal lifestyle led to a sameness from coast to coast that the country had never experienced before. Nor had the country really seen the rise of suburbia as people commuted by the tens of thousands to jobs in the nearby city, which also had it s affect on society.

Against all of this, Richard Yates wrote the 1961 novel Revolutionary Road that was the first work of fiction to examine the cost this conformity exact from the soul of the individual and society as a while. The acclaimed work had resisted being adapted into film until Kate Winslet campaigned for nearly four years to get the film made by her husband, director Sam Mendes.

The resulting production, coming out Tuesday on DVD, quickly became a critics’ darling, garnering three Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe nominations. Starring Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, it told of the Wheelers and the day they woke up to declare they didn’t want to be trapped by the conformity that was suffocating them.

By 1955, they were married with two children, living in Connecticut while Frank commuted to Manhattan to work at the same business machine firm as his father while April felt suffocated in her perky home. She seized on the notion they should follow Frank’s youthful dream of living in Paris so he could figure out what he really wanted to do with his life. She had the then-radical notion of working to support him while he figured it out and her fervor was such that he initially signed on. As the summer progressed, you could watch his cold feet developing as he turned 30 and appeared to lack the courage to act.

The film does a nice job of showing Frank’s isolation despite being surrounded by an army of men in their gray flannel suits contrasted with April’s loneliness in the house. You see them fiercely trying to maintain their marriage while they each drifted in different directions. When April revealed her pregnancy, it became the moment they seemed to permanently part.

The film nicely realizes 1950s suburbia, from the kinds of appetizers served to company, to the uniformity of business attire in the office. What it fails to do is show them in the greater context of their life. The two children are mere decorations with neither parent apparently having any relationship with them. April seems to have a mere two friends despite her participation, no doubt with the children’s peers and their parents. There’s no real sense of their social circle; instead, we’re told they were a special couple but we’re never shown what that means.

As a result, we’re told a lot but not shown enough to understand how they came together and then violently pulled apart. The dialogue is well done by Justin Haythe and delivered by top performers but ultimately, I’m left with an incomplete portrait. The stars are ably supported with the familiar likes of Jay O. Sanders, Dylan Baker, and Kathy Bates.

Nearly stealing the film out from under them is Michael Shannon’s performance as John Givings, a mentally disturbed adult who acts as the vocal conscience for April and Frank. The madman is the only one to see the hypocrisy of their world which is a metaphor that could have been explored further.

The film needed more to win me over but it’s a riveting drama despite its flaws. The DVD comes complete with a handful of deleted scenes, some of which expanded on the themes but reveal nothing new. The 30 minute Making Of featurette gives lip service to the themes but spends a lot of time on the costuming and set design, all of which contributed to the feeling of isolation.

There’s never a hint that while the couple battled the world they made for themselves, there were others slowly evolving beyond the constraints of the expected. Rock and Roll, the Beat Generation, and the civil rights movement were all bubbling to the surface at the time of the film, and the destination from [[[Revolutionary Road]]] could have been found had they worked together to find it.

World War II seems to have generated countless stories about heroism and bravery, stories told for the point of view of the allies and the axis, stories told about life on the homefront and life in the foxhole. As a result, it remains an enduring source of fodder for filmmakers as more and more details come to the surface. Through the 1950s and 1960s, most of the WW II movies were highly fictionalized accounts and by the 1970s war stories were played out, fewer and further between. In the last decade, we’ve had history to sift through and we now know of [[[Schindler’s List]]]. Valkyrie, Bryan Singer’s entry into the pantheon, intended to tell us of the closest a plot to assassinate Hitler came to working.  Presuming you were taught anything about the war in school, you might not even know there were over a dozen attempts to kill the Chancellor of the German Republic.

It’s a story worth telling but it should have been better told. The film was well structured by writers Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander and Singer is to be commended for shooting on location, which gave the film a great look. The cast, led by Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp, Bill Nighy and Eddie Izzard, is to-notch with many performers closely resembling their real world counterparts.

All that was missing was giving a damn about any of these players. The script drained each and every character of personality, sapping the energy out of a story that should have been as compelling as the facts. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, credited as the mastermind behind using Hitler’s own Project Valkyrie against him, was actually an outspoken critic of Nazi Germany. He was a brilliant, well-educated man who spoke multiple languages, loved literature and was partial to horses as well as being a family man, raising four children and embarking on his mission while his wife carried their fifth child.

Wish some of that came through beyond perfunctory scenes of him leaving the family to go kill the Führer.  Cruise is restrained but also bland. The others allying himself were also drained of personality so we never understand why everyone revered Ludwig Beck (Stamp), who was actually quite the legendary figure and a reason so many signed up for the July 20 Plot. Instead, Stamp sits around and makes phone calls.

The actual plot is like a [[[Mission: Impossible]]] story with the usual complications but add to this a lack of conviction on the parts of various players, which at first slows and later tips the balance of action on that fateful day in 1944.  It’s fascinating to see the way communications worked back then, and how people had to sit around and wait for the news over the teletype or radio.

In the end, though, we see how the plot failed and what became of the conspirators but by then, their fates leave you unmoved because after nearly two hours you don’t care about any of them.

Instead, you can skip the movie and go the special features on the DVD, now available. There’s the usual Making Of which shows the detail that went into securing the locations and what some of the locale people thought of the production, especially those still alive who recalled that day. But, best of all, is the 42-minute documentary from Kevin Burns that tells a far more compelling story as the children of von Stauffenberg and other conspirators discussed what they remember plus what their lives were like in the years that followed. This made us care and showed an aftermath the film barely acknowledged. The documentary also tells us some 700 people associated with the plot were tried – that’s a much larger scope than implied in the film which would have given the story more impact.

If I were you, I’d rent the disc, skip the film and watch the documentary.