Movie Review: Revolutionary Road
- Theatrical release date
- December 26, 2008
- DVD release date
- June 2, 2009
- Grade
- B-
A peek into a 1950s suburban hell.
It’s 1955, and Frank and April Wheeler are the thirty-ish couple with two children who would appear to have everything. Eight years before, they’d met at a party: she was studying to be an actress, he was working as a longshoreman on the docks. He told April of his time in Paris — a place where people are “truly alive” — where he plans to return as soon as possible. Yet when the movie opens years later he is a homeowner in the suburbs with a dead end job. So what happened?
Frank works for Knox Business Machines in their marketing department, a throwaway job that requires very little effort, frequent coffee breaks, and three martini lunches with other equally bored company men. April spends her days in domestic drudgery, doing dishes and laundry, minding the children and cooking. Their marriage is a stormy one, punctuated by fighting and one or the other sleeping on the couch. One summer evening, April proposes a stunning idea – they take their savings, sell the house and car, and move to Paris so Frank can find himself. She can take a well-paying government secretarial job and hire part-time help for the children, while Frank takes the time he needs to figure out what it is he wants to do and then goes and does it. She argues that he shouldn’t have to spend his days at a job he hates to support them. Frank, at first reluctant, then warms to the idea, and they plan for a fall departure.
At work Frank is newly invigorated, and as a lark does a throwaway brochure about production control for a distant office in Ohio. Suddenly the drudgery of the every day job is not so appalling anymore; his escape is coming soon. April is also invigorated, acquiring books to learn French, getting passports and investigating steamship passage to Europe for the four of them. But then Frank’s bosses learn of the brochure and suddenly he’s a new rising star in the company, being courted for a new division. Suddenly this new job and more money seem somewhat appealing. Has Frank found his calling?
April, meanwhile, is still committed to Paris and continues with her preparations. She seems unwilling or unable to face the idea that Frank might be more committed sticking with what is safe and known than she first thought. She tells friends of their plans. The friends are shocked by the idea that they would pack up for a foreign country with no job and a reversal of roles. The only person who admires their plan is Michael Givens, the mentally unstable son of an older couple Frank and April befriended upon arriving in the suburbs. He remarks upon their real courage in recognizing the agony of suburban life and their willingness to escape.
Frank still claims to be ready to go to Paris, albeit more reluctantly, until April discovers she is pregnant again. Then Frank begins a subtle campaign to push back the departure date a few years until the baby is a little older. April is only ten weeks pregnant, and she tells him that there are ways of taking care of such a problem before twelve weeks, which shocks Frank. He lashes out at her, and April, desperate, points out that she’s had two children already. Frank suggests perhaps she should start seeing an analyst to help her cope with these thoughts. April calms down, seeing no way out, and becomes resigned to the idea that Paris is off the table for now. They retreat into an uneasy truce for a few weeks, the “safe time” for ending the pregnancy over, until Frank decides one Sunday to confess to an affair and April informs him she doesn’t care and feels nothing. A screaming fight ensues, where Frank shouts that he wishes to God she’d gotten rid of “the thing” and April realizes that there’s no going back from this fight, and that there will be no trip to Paris.
The next morning, Frank comes downstairs to a perfectly restored house and April squeezing orange juice. She turns to him with a shy smile and asks how he’d like his eggs. Frank is confused, but sits down to a breakfast where April asks him about his work and listens intently. As he leaves, he shyly asks if she hates him, and she assures him no, she does not. Happy again, he heads off to work as April waves him off. After he’s gone, her false smile fading, April goes upstairs to find the equipment she wanted to use several weeks previously. The “safe” time has passed, and she knows it. She calls a neighbor who is minding the children and says she’s not well, asks her to keep the children for the day. Then she heads to the bathroom. She later dies in the hospital from the hemorrhaging.
The movie captures the sense of freedom and possibility Frank and April both feel at the beginning of their relationship. Their marriage and subsequent starting of a family yanks them back from the possibility of living a different life and plants them firmly in the traditional roles of 1950s families. For a while, they are equal compatriots in the distain for their boring, humdrum lives, and April’s plan to take them to Paris will allow them to both break free. The unexpected pregnancy, coupled with Frank’s sudden rise at the office to more interesting and intellectually challenging work changes their dynamic. Suddenly the dictates of biology cement April to a traditional role and Frank embraces life at the office.
Revolutionary Road is a strong story about the rigid gender roles of the 1950s and the vastly greater freedoms enjoyed by men. While painful to watch because of April’s despair over her unintended pregnancy and the dissolution of her dream to break free, it serves as a cautionary reminder that we must be ever vigilant to pursue the life we dream of leading and not fall into complacency. The days of traditional gender roles are not too far removed from our own time, and in an uncertain economic climate the temptation to revert to such roles may be great. The story of the “nice young Wheelers of Revolutionary Road” reminds us that an unfulfilled life is a prison equal to one behind bars.
Copyright Kathleen O'Connor. Published 1 April 2009 in What’s New.
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