Revolutionary Road

Last night Mira and Robert watched the movie Revolutionary Road. It is one of those movies that is not especially great while you are watching it, but after it ends you keep trying to figure out what it all meant.

The story is about a young married couple with two kids who live in the suburbs during the 1950s-60s (actually, we could not figure out which decade the movie is supposed to be set since the the set designs didn't seem consistent). The husband is a charismatic marketing executive at a computer company, the wife a frustrated former actress. Neither of them feel comfortable in their current corporate-country club lives. They feel superior to their neighbors. They are each sorta nutty and intense, and they pretty much hate each other. It is sorta like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf meets Mad Men. In fact, I really suspected that the movie was the inspiration for Mad Men, but it looks like the first episode of that TV series started a year before the release of Revolutionary Road.

It is a pretty complicated story, with complicated characters. The center of the story is the couple's desire to escape from their current life by picking up the family and moving to Paris. It is the wife's idea, which the husband quickly adopts. But then indecision sets in because he gets a promotion and she gets pregnant. Ultimately, they disappoint themselves and pretty much set their marriage up for failure by deciding to cancel the move. Actually, the husband forces the change of plan. Everyone then just settles into mediocrity and boredom. Not exactly the feel good movie of the decade, but thought-provoking.

The highlight of the movie for Robert were the scenes in which an edgy mentally unstable friend of the couple omnisciently drills into their lives, their frustrations, their plan and their fears.

The movie hits close to home for any working couple. We were left with the idea, however, that there was just too much drama. The husband and wife essentially drive themselves insane because they can't satisfy themselves with a fulfilling lifestyle. Everyone I know who works for a living and feels trapped is much more self-actualized and rational than these people. We go about our lives with mathematical precision, weighing the costs and benefits of each decision. We are more like the mentally unstable friend than either the wife or husband.