Occasionally, I will be blessed to watch a movie that makes me feel as it were made especially for me. Revolutionary Road is just such a movie. Starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road asks the viewer to consider the possibility that perhaps the Great American Dream is really nothing more than the Great American Tragedy? As if that weren't enough to ponder, you then get to follow the Wheeler family grapple not only with that bewildering question but also the question of what does one do if as a couple you decide to make a complete break from the norms of society only to have one person back out at the last minute out of fear? Leaving the other one flapping in the breeze, far from shore. Now, there's a couple of questions a viewer doesn't have to face very often.
Needless to say Revolutionary Road is not an easy movie to watch, but for a person like myself who actually has had to ponder those two questions in the course of a life, it is a deeply comforting movie. The more so because like his previous masterpiece American Beauty, director Sam Mendes handles the story with the gentlest of hands. It is not easy to tell a story like this without taking sides. To tell a tale that threatens to fully unravel the fabric of everyday society with a no holds barred attitude and bare bones truth. Yet still show gentle compassion for the human journey through life. It takes a deft and visionary touch to both direct and portray characters with such searing honesty and yet give them the depth of humanity, so that in the end the viewer feels a great sadness for the world around them. Yet, because they have faced the almost unponderable truth with empathy and compassion they are comforted by the security of knowing that they will be a better person because of it. Which really is all that one can hope for from any tragedy.
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