Air America beta radio has mentioned last friday an unauthorized documentary about Leonardo DiCaprio’s life.You’re probably wondering, “What is this, the 90s?” In a way, yes. All of the footage featured in “Hangin’ With Leo” looks like it’s from the late 1990s, when DiCaprio was riding the wave of “Titanic” ending up on “The Beach.” If you would like [...]
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Shutter Island Chronicle
Posted By Marcie on June 15th, 2010
by MARTIN SCORSESE
WITH: LEONARDO Di CAPRIO, BEN KINGSLEY and MARK RUFFALO
Thanks To Rahma for sending in the article
This week I’ll talk about SHUTTER ISLAND by Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley and Mark Ruffalo.
We are in 1954 Marshal Teddy Daniels and teammate Chuck Aule are sent to investigate on Shutter Island, in a psychiatric hospital where internees were dangerous criminals. One patient, Rachel Solando has inexplicably disappeared. How deadly she could emerge from a closed cell from the outside? The only clue found in the room is a sheet of paper on which you can read one can read a sequence of numbers and letters without apparent meaning. Is the work consistent with a patient, or Cryptogram? Gradually, the two police officers plunged into a world increasingly opaque and scary, until final shock of truth. The script is based on Denis Lehane’s novel.
Take one of the best current actors, Leonardo Di Caprio, add a first class casting (the ambiguous Ben Kingsley, the mad & furious Jackie Earle and Elias Koteas, the terrifying Emily Mortimer and Michelle Williams the troubling Max Von Sydow and Mark Rufalo) dip them all in the meandering combining psychological twists and infanticide, pyromania, brainwashing lobotomized and suspense in a Gothic atmosphere, amid World War, all neatly orchestrated by a master filmmaker Mr Scorsese : you get the thriller of the year « Shutter Island » ! Chills paranoid guaranteed, without even trying to shedding blood, ne need for that, best art here is to suggest that much …
Whatever you’ve been told about « Shutter Island », get ready for anything else! You’re not just going to watch a movie, but you submit to a collective experience of psychoanalysis under the direction of a great Master filmmaker Martin Scorsese, guided by steps from the talented Leonardo Di Caprio…
Indeed, within the first minutes of the game, the performance of the players who stare, the scary music, replies politely aggressive install the atmosphere of the film, which will remain in torment neurotic doubled from psychosis.
If I tell you that the memory becomes a dream, that the dream becomes hallucinatory, that the hallucinatory becomes real, that reality becomes traumatic that the trauma become neurotic and that neurosis comes over you and why not purify you, the time of a screening. You do not understand anything? This is just normal, but please, do reread these lines after watching the film and you’ll see how you’ll get it all!
No need to design, just a cryptogram, scrawled by a (supposedly) psychopath prisoner is enough to kick off a treasure hunt, you and the Marshall Daniels must unravel the plot over this psychotic trip.
A kind of game in a labyrinth, which even the creators do not seem to be eager to reveal the too well guarded secret, around Shutter Island.
Among the most significant quotes of the movie, here are the ones I noted:
« When you see a monster, it must be stopped »… But what is the monster here, is it the arsonist to the ugly scar? George H.? Or the dubious doctor Coleen? Unless it is the monster, that sleeps deep within the Marshall Daniels, or by yourself, within each one of us…
One thing is certain, the human monster is here, and it reigns in latency, just begging to be awakened from its torpor guided by morals, separating well from evil.
What is the most monstrous, lobotomize of human beings, as criminal and violent as they can be to serve « science » and endless experiments doubtfully military? Or wishing to bring to light, by a thorough investigation, with forced voyeurism, what is happening here? The Marshall will guide you up to the answer …just follow him!
« You are certainly one of those who believe that madness is contagious” launches Marshal Edward Daniels to the security chief of the penitentiary. He was far from imagining that as said George Courteline. “It is comforting to think that if the insanity does not win anything in contact with reason, however, the altered due to contact of Madness ». To understand, keep following the Marshall and don’t give up an inch.
Pretentious is the spectator who will tell you they have understood absolutely everything in the film, and at no time were neither manipulated nor trapped in the subversive labyrinth of Scorsese!
THE POWER OF A SMART ENERGIC SET UP AND WITH NO FAULT
“Shutter Island”, is a stunning screenplay mechanism full of winks film that Scorsese likes to flash. Exacerbation ghostly as referring to Kubrick, des twists as referring to Shyamalan, intoxications of neurotic referring to Lynch, distilled in a suspense account drop as a referring to Hitchcok…Film fans will delight these references anthologies that Scorsese afforded as to renew his own style.
Even if Scorsese’ universe is here intact, with the maze of trompe l’oeil stairs, fatal compositions and musical passages fixtures and felted snobs are facing the wicked rulers.
The scenes cleverly worked, with fields against fields treated relating connections to induce the approaches that American prison laboratory are not so remote in their practices of certain “pseudo-medical experiments” operating on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. The military indoctrination justified and perpetuated through brainwashing as vile as disgusting. The only criticism I could make would be too many flashbacks sent too rough, who have confused my mind. But this is certainly what makes the richness and complexity of the film as some would say and make it breathtaking. In short, we like to be manipulated and tested in this skilful way causing a release of serotonin, plus other neurotransmitters and CCK4 specific good thrillers.
Claustrophobic abstain because the film is an insane intensity!
STORY ANALYSIS
The Marshall Teddy Daniels is therefore trying with his teammate to enlighten the mysterious disappearance of the prisoner by the feverish flame of his match; Schedule it in penitentiary‘s shallows the rhythm of a storm that would isolate the island from the rest of the world, the time to investigate.
Gradually, as investigators believe progressing or advancing, over the riddle, the thundering storm rages as the most beautiful sign of divine wrath. From the first minutes of the film, the image of this foggy ferry out of nowhere and heading towards the island, predicted these officers times painful and far from the real world. They wouldn’t suspect the scope of this voyage to hell in this so highly secure penitentiary, yet devoid of safety.
FILM ANALYSIS
The film takes us from the first sequence until the last, to the unstoppable anguish. With the help of the agonizing music, the beginnings of a storm that rumbles amplifying the heavy atmosphere. The viewer can not help but get involved in the game, of the leading actor Leonardo Di Caprio, and with him waver between past and present, dream and reality, reason and madness by psychic transferring that only an excellent staging can afford.
The simple mad story of investigating in a psychiatric environment away from the world on an isolated island would suffice as a substrate thriller.
Nevertheless, the real skill lies in staging intelligent and inspired, rhythm, perfectly studied, appropriate aesthetics and instinctual play of Leonardo Di Caprio engaged body and soul to his role. He, who confesses having pushed his own limits, says: “we did not realize initially how much this film would push our limits”! Indeed, He’d never imagined how he would plunge into paranoia whimsical gothic. Nothing less!
And Martin Scorsese takes us slowly but surely, since the early minutes of the film, through the electrified barbed wire with the sight of a patient with bulging eyes and metal teeth, waving a finger on her mouth as a warning.
As if what is going on at Shutter Island, is as horrible as in a concentration camp Dachau, where Edward Daniels was just past when military staff on duty at the U.S. during the Second World War. We can’t indeed help making the connection with the “medical experiments” done on humans in concentration camps…
As those practiced by the Nazis, including the sadly famous Joseph Mengele, whose doctoral work in the 30s wanted to prove the “superiority” of European type, representing the Aryan ideal …
Besides, this camp has been made infamous by the horrors lab workers who practiced it on human subjects that represented for the Nazis, the Jewish inmates: Experiences absorption of sea water, crystallization of blood solution use of mescaline…
The flashback memory of Marshall Daniels with images of bodies piled on the Dachau camp, are reminiscent of the Institute of Anatomy discovered in 1944 in Strasbourg.
They were reserved for experiments of Professor Hirth … and a certain oxygen bomb intended to remove all traces.
One of the great strengths and great puzzles at once, of this film is that it can be read on multiple dimensions and multiple levels.
Although from my point of view it shows two main aspects, which are THE MADNESS AND THE MOURNING, through a psychological maze that explores the violence pushed up to monstrosity.
The viewer lives hereby and by substitution violent emotions, which affect both the loss of loved ones, bereavement, difficult to accomplish as well as a passive contribution to a crime against humanity.
The players whose performances are so high, that they capture the viewer in mental motion or transferring transmit these powerful emotions. In psychoanalysis a shrink would explain that you are making a purifying so called “catharsis”. A kind of analytical treatment, that occurs, by a process of hypnosis-film of madness.
THE CASTING
On the one hand, we must emphasize the remarkable interpretation of Leonardo Di Caprio, who is masterful bluff. He lays bare the risky overlay of his emotions so that his game is perfectly mastered mad.
Everything is explored by him, fear, anger, resentment, tenderness, regret, sorrow, rage, psychosis, neurosis, and why not say… madness!
It even reaches a breaking point in his performance that tipped the viewer in doubt and in the script’s alienating trap.
Leonardo Di Caprio vacillating between fragility and strength delivers here perhaps his finest performance to date. This kind of game belongs to a tiny bunch of current players, and ranks him in the class of actors renowned as just GREAT. Henceforth, he is one of those whose artistic maturity, never ceases to challenge to reach the top, and thus raise the level of others.
Leonardo Di Caprio, who has made his 4th collaboration with his “mentor” Martin Scorsese (“Gangs of New York”, “The departed”, “Aviator” and “Shutter Island”) has humbly declared “Fingers crossed for work again with director Martin Scorsese, his love of cinema is so contagious that it infects everyone on set”.
Well this is the only kind of contagion that I would welcome open-armed!
Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese declares about his new mascot actor “He’s is a wonderful actor who develops his art. He also matures as a person and it feeds his work”.
Another actor contributes with his charisma to create anguishing atmosphere in this film is Ben Kingsley, who by his mystic face, who by his piercing eyes, who by his ambiguous immaculate appearance, interprets to perfection the role of the psychiatrist Coleen … madly convincing! The only downside is the delay due to the distribution failed to present the film to the 82nd Oscar Ceremony. A missed chance to grab Best Actor Oscar for Leonardo Di Caprio and Best Director Oscar for Marti Scorsese!
SHUTTER ISLAND THE BOOK
However, it wouldn’t be fair to talk about this movie without mentioning the author of the bestselling novel, which he alleges, Dennis Lehane.
This nowadays, writer was a former educator specializing in child abuse, his favourite subject. The author of bestsellers, which has also been driver, and bookseller had probably never imagined that one day the greatest directors like Clint Eastwood (Mystic River) and Martin Scorsese would fight for his novels to adapt them so prodigiously.
WHO IS MARTIN SCORSESE?
Leonardo Di Caprio stated about Martin Scorsese “He is the best director of our time”. I would not contradict him, as I was shaken by “Taxi Driver“ Palm Cannes awarded in 1976, enchanted by “New York New York” released in 1977, then enraged by” Raging Bull ” Oscar winner in 1980, outraged by “The Last Temptation of Christ” or bluffed by “The Color of Money.”
Unless I was most impressed by the “Goodfellas” or “Cape fear,” “Casino” or the recent masterpieces “Departed” and “Gangs of New York”.
All these works that address his favourite topics, such as the American identity through the prism of immigration, Italian, Irish, Jewish communities, banditry, Catholic morality, guilt and redemption, so dear to the American audience.
Nevertheless, the fundamentals underlying most of his films rely on violence and machismo.
The filmmaker inflated humility learned, a lot from John Cassavetes, was influenced by the French nouvelle vague and has also taught a lot to a certain Robert De Niro, who became his mascot player.
Martin Scorsese, award collector, has enabled more his actors/actresses to win Oscars, than he won himself.
So often and often nominated but so seldom rewarded! He had to wait until 2006 to finally receive the Oscar for best director with “Departed”.
In fact he has a filmography that deserves a column all by itself, and yet not obscure works as unusual as masterful!
Nevertheless, what would be the American cinema, nowadays, if the young Martin Scorsese while suffering from asthma and hence excluded from sportive activities had not so assiduously frequented the theatres to watch movies?
And by the way, did you know that Martin Scorsese had, as a great music lover, directed the video clip for the huge « Bad » Michael Jackson’s blockbuster?
SOME FIGURES
For its first weekend, Shutter Island has already earned $ 40.2 million in the United States and Canada, representing 1/3 of total revenue, according to a report from market research firm Exhibitor Relations.
The director of “Taxi Driver” and lead actor of “Titanic” realize the best start of their careers, stresses the U.S. media.
AN UMPTEENTH MASTERPIECE SIGNED SCORSESE?
Perhaps the director wanted to push for intimacy with his audience to the edge of the tolerance limit, as to generate an emotional shock that enabled to acquire the knowledge through visual experience and why not purify further, the evil thoughts that might sully his mind. A kind of catharsis through the play and image is offered.
If the film industry, has the power to entertain, and if Hollywood prides itself on making the “entertainment” its spearhead, Martin Scorsese, meanwhile, who mastered the art of directing good actors and films perfectly, seems to reach Other peaks in the 7th Art.
By pushing his limits and those of his new favourite actor, Leonardo Di Caprio to the ends of the unheard Martin Scorsese, delivers a work as masterly as alienating.
WHY GO SEE THIS FILM?
Because it is a hymn to life! When you quit the theatre, you might find yourself thinking: “I want to LIVE” “To live far away from the fools and those who supposedly take care of them!”
By the way, can madness be treated? If you watch carefully the movie, you might have the answer at the end of screening.
In all cases the only madness that you want is in spite of everything, that of loving to distraction the masterpieces of Master Martin Scorsese.
Decidedly, he knows not only how to vibrate harmoniously his actor’s strings but also, as an alchemist, how to draw up the bottom of Leo Di Caprio’s talent’s bursting wells; and distil a delicious bittersweet liquor, with an aftertaste from a secret Gothic alembic…
Great art signed, the madly terrific Scorsese, for as Aristotle said, “There is no genius without a touch of madness.”
Thanks to Rahma Rachdi for weekly Cinema Chronicle on RMB radio 88.4 FM The radio free as air.
Shutter Island Blu-ray Review
Posted By Marcie on May 31st, 2010
Shutter Island reveals yet another astonishing Blu-ray from Paramount. This 2.35:1 transfer displays the film’s dark noir-style imagery to near perfection, capturing the visual spirit of a bygone era but with the impeccable detailing, depth, and clarity afforded to productions of a more recent vintage. Shutter Island works via a unique visual style whereby it’s dark and foreboding here, brighter and livelier there, but never does the transfer fail to handle the varied visual schemes with equal parts detail and color reproduction. Even the darkest, dingiest frames in the film sport incredible textures and low-light shadow details. Black levels are tremendous, deep and strong, and never at all too bright. On the flip side, brighter daytime scenes and several well-lit interiors deliver marvelous color reproduction; whether the green grasses and multicolored flowers about the island or several more flat but no less handsomely-rendered interiors, Paramount’s transfer never misses a beat in any environment. Similarly, detailing is nothing short of exceptional; viewers will note the finest of nuances on clothing; wrinkles, lines, pores, and hairs on faces; and the rough textures of the various interior and exterior surfaces. The print is as pristine as they come, sporting nary a scratch nor speck of dirt. A thin veneer of film grain covers the screen to add a wonderful film-like texture to the presentation, and only a few minor instances of background banding mar this otherwise lovely transfer. This is what home theater is all about, and Paramount proves yet again that they’re committed to delivering the finest filmic transfers to the Blu-ray market. Job well done.
Shutter Island comes to Blu-ray with but two extras. Behind the Shutters (1080p, 17:10) features interviews with cast, crew, and Author Dennis Lehane, all speaking on the themes of the story, the work of Director Martin Scorsese, the cast’s preparations for their roles, the picture’s music, and the film’s elements of duality. Into the Lighthouse (1080p, 21:11) takes a closer look at the film’s construction and the way it weaves deeper psychiatric elements into the story, the actors’ understanding of the film’s darker elements, set design, psychiatric care in the 1950s, and more.
Source: Blu-ray
Revolutionary Road Review
Posted By Marcie on February 4th, 2009
What does a cult 1961 Richard Yates novel about a 1950s marriage rotting in the burbs have to say to a new century? Plenty, and hold on, because the raw and riveting Revolutionary Road hits you where it hurts. To hear Kate Winslet, as April Wheeler, express her desire “to be wonderful in the world” is to be reminded of stifled urges with no expiration date.
Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, as her husband, Frank, could not be better in the roles of young marrieds who (shades of Mad Men) move from Manhattan to the suburbs, promising themselves it’s all just temporary. April dreams of taking off for Paris, where she’ll work while Frank pursues his artistic impulses. Add two kids, thwarted ambitions, adultery — Frank with a secretary (a vivid Zoe Kazan) and April with a married neighbor (the excellent David Harbour) — plus April’s unwanted third pregnancy, and the whooshing sound you hear is a dream in free-fall.
Directed with extraordinary skill by Sam Mendes (American Beauty), who warms the chill in the Yates-faithful script by Justin Haythe, the film is a tough road well worth traveling. Camera genius Roger Deakins lights the “hopeless emptiness” on view with a terrible beauty. All the actors amaze. Start the award buzz for Michael Shannon as John Givings, the institutionalized son of a gossipy realtor (the ever-superb Kathy Bates). Home on a visit, John spits the truth at Frank and April. Playing the role like a heat-seeking missile that targets hypocrisy, the volcanic Shannon scores a knockout. DiCaprio is in peak form, bringing layers of buried emotion to a defeated man. And the glorious Winslet defines what makes an actress great, blazing commitment to a character and the range to make every nuance felt. Winslet’s last scene, as April prepares breakfast for a husband who can’t see the torment behind her smile, is emotionally devastating. This movie takes a piece out of you.
Posted in Film Reviews
Movie review: ‘Revolutionary Road’ year’s best
Posted By Marcie on February 4th, 2009
Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic
Friday, January 2, 2009
Revolutionary Road: Drama. Starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Directed by Sam Mendes. (R. 120 minutes. At Bay Area theaters. For complete movie listings and show times, and to buy tickets for select theaters, go to sfgate.com/ movies.)
“Revolutionary Road” gets my vote as the best American film of 2008. Why do I love it? Let me count the ways:
1. Marriage, ’50s style: The movie, which stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, dissects a marriage, an examination that leads in two distinct and significant directions. The movie captures the timeless torment of the unhappy marriage, in the way the spouses know each other’s weak spots and go for the jugular, and in the way arguments can veer out of control from the simplest of beginnings.
At the same time – and this is important – the film is very specific about the marital pressures peculiar to the film’s era, the mid-1950s. For the man, it means a life sentence of unrewarding work. For the woman, it’s a cell door closing. For both, it’s a farewell to dreams.
Incidentally, the specificity with which director Sam Mendes conveys this era makes it baffling and irritating to hear people compare this film to AMC’s “Mad Men.” “Revolutionary Road” is about the 1950s, not the early ’60s, a big difference. Richard Yates, who wrote the novel “Revolutionary Road” in 1961, understood the difference; that’s why he set the book in 1955. It’s the difference between Eisenhower and Kennedy, between Tennessee Ernie Ford and Chubby Checker, and anybody who confuses the two isn’t giving this film the attention it demands and deserves.
2. Unforgettable shot: Speaking of the 1950s, I love the shot of the men getting off the train in the morning at Grand Central Station, a sea of hats and gray flannel cascading down the long stairway, on the way to some death-mill office job. Who would want to be a part of that?
3. Not your generic marriage: The script brilliantly conveys a particular personality dynamic almost guaranteed to make for a glorious courtship and a miserable marriage. Frank (DiCaprio) and April (Winslet) meet and are mutually captivated. His secret desire is to be a big shot. Her dream is to live a life that’s truly unique. When they talk about their life dreams, they sound as though they share the same ambition: Each wants to be distinctive.
In fact, his desire to be a big shot is the longing of the closet conformist, who craves the approval of society and the envy of his peers. And her desire to be unique is the longing of someone who has no need of society or peers. So they get married thinking they’re speaking the same language and then find themselves married and having no idea what the other is talking about.
4. A private scene between husband and wife: Frank and April visit their best friends and tell them the good news: They plan to sell the house and move to Paris at the end of summer! They’re going to throw off the bounds of conformity and live an adventurous life! Later that night, the friends (David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn), a married couple, alone in their bedroom, are utterly thrown. They are millimeters away from confronting their own frustration and life despair. But with an act of will, they force themselves to sink back into their delusion. It’s painful.
5. Sex and despair: I love the use of extra-marital sex in “Revolutionary Road.” As is so often the case in life, it’s the only creative outlet left to people who have given up hope. It’s an expression of deep despair.
6. Leo: This is a wonderful role for DiCaprio, in that it capitalizes on all that’s strong and weak about him: his winning smile, his glibness, his engaging personality and also his slightly superficial, lightweight aura. Winslet’s spirit seems many years older, which makes Frank seem no match for April’s expectations.
7. Kate: Winslet is astonishing in this film, giving the best performance by an English-speaking actress in 2008. It’s all there: April’s enormous dreams and crushing frustration. I love the subdued yet ever-alert way she looks at DiCaprio for signs that he might be the man she thought she was marrying. And I love the way he mostly wilts and sometimes preens under the scrutiny. This is the portrait of a brilliant woman shut in a trap.
8. A silent generation speaks: I’ve had women in their 80s tell me about life in the mid-1950s, how all the cultural markers – movies, TV, advertisements – told them they should be happy in domestic servitude, but they weren’t. So they thought they were the only ones and were crazy. “Revolutionary Road” is a movie about those women. You might think of it as a tribute to them.
9. Michael Shannon. He was Ashley Judd’s co-star in “Bug.” Here he plays a mentally ill man who says whatever he thinks, and everything he observes about Frank and April’s marriage is true. He has just a couple of scenes, but he dominates them, and the screenplay gives him the key line – that everyone admits to the emptiness of suburban life, but that “it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”
10. Repeat viewings: Finally, this is a movie that can and should be seen more than once. Watch it one time through her eyes. Watch it again through his eyes. It works both ways. It works in every way. This is a great American film.
– Advisory: This film contains strong language and sexual situations.
To hear Mick LaSalle talk about movies, listen to his weekly podcast at sfgate.com/podcasts.
E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.
Posted in Film Reviews
With this ring, a farewell to life’s dreams
Posted By Marcie on February 4th, 2009
By MICK LASALLE
San Francisco Chronicle
Posted: 01/08/2009 01:55:58 AM PST
Revolutionary Road” gets my vote as the best American film of 2008. Why do I love it? Let me count the ways:1. Marriage, ’50s style: The movie, which stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, dissects a marriage, an examination that leads in two distinct and significant directions.
The movie captures the timeless torment of the unhappy marriage, in the way the spouses know each other’s weak spots and go for the jugular, and in the way arguments can veer out of control from the simplest of beginnings.
At the same time — and this is important — the film is very specific about the marital pressures peculiar to the film’s era, the mid-1950s.
For the man, it means a life sentence of unrewarding work. For the woman, it’s a cell door closing. For both, it’s a farewell to dreams.
Incidentally, the specificity with which director Sam Mendes conveys this era makes it baffling and irritating to hear people compare this film to AMC’s “Mad Men.”
“Revolutionary Road” is about the 1950s, not the early ’60s, a big difference. Richard Yates, who wrote the novel “Revolutionary Road” in 1961, understood the difference; that’s why he set the book in 1955.
It’s the difference between Eisenhower and Kennedy, between Tennessee Ernie Ford and Chubby Checker, and anybody who confuses the two isn’t giving this film the attention it demands and deserves.
2. Unforgettable shot: Speaking of the 1950s, I love the shot of the men getting off the train in the morning at Grand Central Station, a sea of hats and gray flannel cascading down the long stairway, on the way to some death-mill office job. Who would want to be a part of that?3. Not your generic marriage: The script brilliantly conveys a particular personality dynamic almost guaranteed to make for a glorious courtship and a miserable marriage.
Frank (DiCaprio) and April (Winslet) meet and are mutually captivated. His secret desire is to be a big shot. Her dream is to live a life that’s truly unique.
When they talk about their life dreams, they sound as though they share the same ambition: Each wants to be distinctive.
In fact, his desire to be a big shot is the longing of the closet conformist, who craves the approval of society and the envy of his peers.
And her desire to be unique is the longing of someone who has no need of society or peers.
So they get married thinking they’re speaking the same language and then find themselves married and having no idea what the other is talking about.
4. A private scene between husband and wife: Frank and April visit their best friends and tell them the good news: They plan to sell the house and move to Paris at the end of summer! They’re going to throw off the bounds of conformity and live an adventurous life!
Later that night, the friends (David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn), a married couple, alone in their bedroom, are utterly thrown. They are millimeters away from confronting their own frustration and life despair. But with an act of will, they force themselves to sink back into their delusion. It’s painful.
5. Sex and despair: I love the use of extramarital sex in “Revolutionary Road.” As is so often the case in life, it’s the only creative outlet left to people who have given up hope. It’s an expression of deep despair.
6. Leo: This is a wonderful role for DiCaprio, in that it capitalizes on all that’s strong and weak about him: his winning smile, his glibness, his engaging personality and also his slightly superficial, lightweight aura.
Winslet’s spirit seems many years older, which makes Frank seem no match for April’s expectations.
7. Kate: Winslet is astonishing in this film, giving the best performance by an English-speaking actress in 2008.
It’s all there: April’s enormous dreams and crushing frustration. I love the subdued yet ever-alert way she looks at DiCaprio for signs that he might be the man she thought she was marrying.
And I love the way he mostly wilts and sometimes preens under the scrutiny. This is the portrait of a brilliant woman shut in a trap.
8. A silent generation speaks: I’ve had women in their 80s tell me about life in the mid-1950s, how all the cultural markers — movies, TV, advertisements — told them they should be happy in domestic servitude, but they weren’t.
So they thought they were the only ones and were crazy. “Revolutionary Road” is a movie about those women. You might think of it as a tribute to them.
9. Michael Shannon: He was Ashley Judd’s co-star in “Bug.” Here he plays a mentally ill man who says whatever he thinks, and everything he observes about Frank and April’s marriage is true.
He has just a couple of scenes, but he dominates them, and the screenplay gives him the key line — that everyone admits to the emptiness of suburban life, but that “it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”
10. Repeat viewings: Finally, this is a movie that can and should be seen more than once. Watch it one time through her eyes. Watch it again through his eyes. It works both ways. It works in every way. This is a great American film.GO!
‘REVOLUTIONARY ROAD’ ·Featuring:Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, directed by Sam Mendes ·Where:Osio in Monterey ·Rating:R, for strong language and some sexual content/nudity ·Running time:2 hours Revolutionary Road’ By Colin Covert Star Tribune (Minneapolis) At the tail end of a season where the most consistent emotion filmmakers have offered was disappointment tinged with despair comes the bleakest, most beautiful downer of them all. “Revolutionary Road” is easily the best-acted film of 2008, and one of the most corrosive. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio give turbulent, astonishing performances as Frank and April Wheeler, a thirtyish couple whose relationship is one part “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” one part “Babbitt” and one part arsenic. They seemed promising, initially. We first encounter them at a big-city party full of smart young people, making flirtatious small talk and dancing close. “Frank Wheeler,” she says, “I think you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.” That flattering first impression is gone in a flash. With a single edit we leap ahead several years into their marriage, with April, a would-be actress, fumbling through a community theater drama. Frank can scarcely conceal his chagrin afterward, and his condescending praise compounds April’s humiliation. Their drive home escalates from exasperation through pent-up resentment into a magma burst of seething rage. No one who has been witness to a disastrous marriage can observe this eruption without a shudder of sympathy. The raw power of the emotions is almost unbearable. Frank and April make a stab at buying contentment when they purchase a prim house in Connecticut. The address — on Revolutionary Road — is constant reminder of the adventurous paths they both fear to travel. As a couple, they endure coexistence without intimacy. They are partly prisoners of their egos, partly of their environment and era. Richard Yates’ novel, the 1961 National Book Award-winner, took a merciless scalpel to the frustrations of midcentury suburban life. The Wheelers are trapped in a milieu of stifling conformity, he commuting daily amid a crush of cattle in gray flannel to earn their bread, she tied tight in an apron at home, baking it. But the couple’s festering discontents aren’t just an allegory of the time. Their fatal flaw is the unjustified belief that they are uniquely gifted creatures, superior to their surroundings — hubris is a defect in human nature with no expiration date. Frank flatters himself that he has artistic abilities untapped by his job writing catalogue copy for an office machine company. April wants to cast off her domesticity and move with Frank to bohemian Paris, where she will type for the diplomatic corps and he will work on … well, something creative. By moving them to France, April will convince herself that she married an adventurous free spirit, not a timid phony. “We are the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the world,” she insists. But Frank is a hollow creature, and so is she. Frank sneers at the “hopeless emptiness” of suburban life while accepting its mausoleum tidiness. April is as superficial as the theater club makeup she daubs on for her disastrous stage debut. Each begins sabotaging the getaway plan to expatriate life as soon as it is announced. Each betrays the marriage with a cheap affair. She keens in wounded neediness and erupts in spittle-flecked rage. He is alternately baffled and belligerent. A scene near the end where a glacially composed Winslet serves the nervous DiCaprio breakfast vividly conjures up the nitroglycerine tension of their relationship. Watching these two stars tear into each other is like viewing a bullfight. It’s unspeakably cruel yet mesmerizing. And the ironic casting of “Titanic’s” immortal lovers as brutal antagonists on a marital battlefield is initially funny, then deeply upsetting. The supporting cast members serve as red flags to warn the heedless young couple of the dangers awaiting them. Dylan Baker is wickedly sardonic as Frank’s alcoholic coworker, Kathy Bates (another “Titanic” alum) makes their gossipy real estate agent a humdrum horror, and Michael Shannon contributes a scene-stealing turn as Bates’ institutionalized son, a schizophrenic Greek chorus who sees the true hopelessness of the Wheelers’ lives. There are passages of narrative ham-handedness that weaken the story (a portentous discussion of the safest way to terminate a pregnancy virtually gives you a road map to the story’s conclusion) but director Sam Mendes guides the actors to moments of tragic offhand brilliance in almost every scene. This is a movie you can’t help but admire, even as it tears the bark off you.GO! REVOLUTIONARY ROAD 4 stars Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet Directed by: Sam Mendes Rated R for language and some sexual content/nudity.
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