Story of movie Revolutionary Road Film : Revolutionary Road is a 2008 British-American romantic drama film directed by Sam Mendes. It was written by Justin Haythe and based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Richard Yates. This is the second on-screen collaboration among Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and Kathy Bates, all of whom previously co-starred in Titanic. The performances of DiCaprio and Winslet earned them a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama nomination and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, respectively, and the film was nominated for a further three Golden Globes, four BAFTAs and three Academy Awards, including a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Michael Shannon.
| Revolutionary Road | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Sam Mendes |
| Produced by | Bobby Cohen Sam Mendes Scott Rudin John Hart |
| Screenplay by | Justin Haythe |
| Based on | Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates |
| Starring | Leonardo DiCaprio Kate Winslet Michael Shannon Kathryn Hahn David Harbour Kathy Bates |
| Music by | Thomas Newman |
| Cinematography | Roger Deakins |
| Edited by | Tariq Anwar |
Production company | BBC Films Neal Street Productions |
| Distributed by | Paramount Vantage DreamWorks Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 119 minutes |
| Country | United States United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $35 million |
| Box office | $75.2 million |
The film premiered in Los Angeles on 15 December 2008, followed by a limited U.S. release on 26 December 2008 and a wide U.S. release on 23 January 2009. In most other countries, it was released between 15 and 30 January 2009.
Screenplay
In 1948, Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) meets April (Winslet) at a party. He is a longshoreman, hoping to be a cashier; she wants to be an actress. Frank later secures a sales position with Knox Machines, for which his father worked for 20 years, and he and April marry. The Wheelers move to 115 Revolutionary Road in suburban Connecticut when April becomes pregnant.
The couple becomes close friends with their realtor Helen Givings (Bates) and her husband Howard Givings (Richard Easton), and neighbor Milly Campbell (Kathryn Hahn) and her husband Shep (David Harbour). To their friends, the Wheelers are the perfect couple, but their relationship is troubled. April fails to make a career out of acting, while Frank hates the tedium of his work. Meanwhile, Helen asks the couple to meet her son, John (Shannon), who had been declared insane, to try to help better his condition. They accept.
April wants new scenery and a chance to support the family so Frank can find his passion, so suggests that they move to Paris to start a new life away from the "hopeless emptiness" of their repetitive lifestyle. Frank balks at the idea at first, but becomes convinced. Over the next several weeks, the Wheelers tell their various friends about their plans to live in Paris, but surprisingly, the only person who seems to comprehend their decision is John.
As the couple prepares to move, they are forced to reconsider. Frank is offered a promotion, and April becomes pregnant again. When Frank discovers she is contemplating having an abortion, he is furious and starts screaming at April, leading to a serious altercation, in which April says that they had their second child only to prove the first child was not a "mistake".
The next day, Frank takes the promotion and tries to accept his uneventful life. At the end of an evening at a jazz bar with the Campbells, Shep and April end up alone together. She confides in him of her depression over the canceled Paris plans and her life in general and they end up having sex in the car. Shep professes his long-held love for April, but she rejects his interest.
The following day, Frank confesses to having had an affair with a female assistant at his office, hoping to reconcile with April. To his surprise, April responds apathetically and tells him it does not matter as her love for him has gone, which he does not believe. The Givings come over for dinner, and Frank announces to the guests that their plans have changed, as April is pregnant. John harshly lambasts Frank for crushing April's hope, as well as his acceptance of his circumstances. Angered, Frank nearly attacks John, and the Givings hurry out. Afterwards, Frank and April have a severe verbal altercation, after which April flees the house.
Frank spends the night in a drunken stupor. The next morning he is shocked to find April in the kitchen, calmly making breakfast as if nothing happened. Frank, unsure of how to react, eats with her and seemingly reconciles, then leaves for work. April goes upstairs and performs a vacuum aspiration abortion. Afterwards, she discovers herself bleeding and calls an ambulance. Frank arrives at the hospital, distraught and being comforted by Shep. April soon dies in the hospital due to blood loss.
Frank, feeling deep guilt and now a hollow shell of his former self, moves to the city and starts selling computers. He spends all of his extra time with his children. A new couple, the Braces, buys the house and Milly tells the story of the Wheelers to them. Shep stops the story and walks out of the house, crying. When Milly asks Shep what is wrong, he asks her in return to never talk about the Wheelers ever again.
Helen talks to her husband years later about how the Braces seem to be the best-suited couple for the Wheelers' old house. When her husband mentions the Wheelers, Helen starts to talk about why she did not like them. As she continues talking about all of the things that she did not like about them, her husband turns off his hearing aid.
- Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Wheeler
- Kate Winslet as April Wheeler
- Michael Shannon as John Givings, Jr.
- Kathryn Hahn as Milly Campbell
- David Harbour as Shep Campbell
- Kathy Bates as Helen Givings
- Ty Simpkins as Michael Wheeler
- Richard Easton as Howard Givings
- Ryan Simpkins as Jennifer Wheeler
- Dylan Baker as Jack Ordway
- Zoe Kazan as Maureen Grube
- Max Casella as Ed Small
- Jay O. Sanders as Bart Pollock
After Richard Yates' novel was published in 1961, director John Frankenheimer considered filming it, but opted to make The Manchurian Candidate, instead. Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., expressed an interest in making it into a film but others in his studio convinced him that it lacked commercial prospects. In 1965, producer Albert S. Ruddy bought the rights but did not like the book's ending, and wanted to obscure April's death with "tricky camerawork". He became involved in adapting The Godfather and, five years later, while a writer-in-residence at Wichita State University, Yates offered to adapt his work for the screen. Ruddy had other projects lined up at the time and demurred, eventually selling the rights to actor Patrick O'Neal. The actor loved the book and spent the rest of his life trying to finish a workable screenplay. Yates read O'Neal's treatment of his novel and found it "godawful", but O'Neal refused the writer's repeated offers to buy back the rights. Yates died in 1992, O'Neal two years later.
The project remained in limbo until 2001 when Todd Field expressed interest in adapting it for the screen. However, when told by the O'Neal estate he would be required to shoot O'Neal's script as written, Field stepped away from the material and opted to make Little Children instead. David Thompson eventually purchased the rights for BBC Films. In March 2007, BBC Films established a partnership with DreamWorks, and the rights to the film's worldwide distribution were assigned to Paramount Pictures, owner of DreamWorks. On 14 February 2008, Paramount announced that Paramount Vantage was "taking over distribution duties on Revolutionary Road". The BBC hired Justin Haythe to write the screenplay because, according to the screenwriter, he was "hugely affordable".
Kate Winslet sent producer Scott Rudin the script and he told her that her then husband, director Sam Mendes, would be perfect to direct it. She gave Mendes Yates' novel and told him, "I really want to play this part". He read Haythe's script and then the book in quick succession. Haythe's first draft was very faithful to the novel, using large parts of Yates' own language, but Mendes told him to find ways to externalize what Frank and April do not say to each other.
Once Leonardo DiCaprio agreed to do the film, it went almost immediately into production. DiCaprio said that he saw his character as "unheroic" and "slightly cowardly" and that he was "willing to be just a product of his environment". DiCaprio prepared for the role by watching several documentaries about the 1950s and the origin of suburbs. He said that the film was not meant to be a romance and that he and Winslet intentionally avoided films that show them in romantic roles since Titanic. Both DiCaprio and Winslet were reluctant to make films similar to Titanic because "we just knew it would be a fundamental mistake to try to repeat any of those themes". To prepare for the role, Winslet read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.
Mendes had the cast rehearse for three-and-a-half weeks before principal photography and shot everything in sequence and on location. Actor Michael Shannon said that he did not feel that on the set of the film there were any stars, but "a group of people united by a passion for the material and wanting to honor the book". He said that Winslet and DiCaprio could only make such a good performance as a couple because they had developed a friendship since their work on Titanic. For Shannon, it was more important to prepare for the moment when he walked on the set than being concerned about the movie stars he was working with. On the fight scenes between him and Winslet, DiCaprio said, "So much of what happens between Frank and April in this film is what's left unsaid. I actually found it a real joy to do those fight scenes because finally, these people were letting each other have it." The shoot was so emotionally and physically exhausting for DiCaprio that he postponed his next film for two months.
Mendes wanted to create a claustrophobic dynamic and shot all of the Wheeler house interiors in an actual house in Darien, Connecticut. DiCaprio remembers, "it was many months in this house and there was no escaping the environment. I think it fed into the performances." They could not film in a period accurate house because it would have been too small to shoot inside. Production Designer Kristi Zea is responsible for the "iconic, nostalgic images of quaint Americana", although she says that was "absolutely the antithesis of what we wanted to do". Zea chose for the set of this film furnishings that "middle-class America would be buying at that time".
During the post-production phase, Mendes cut 18 scenes, or 20 minutes to achieve a less literal version that he saw as more in the spirit of Yates' novel.
Revolutionary Road had a limited release in the United States at three theatres on December 26, 2008 and a wide release at 1,058 theatres on January 23, 2009. Revolutionary Road has earned $22.9 million at the domestic box office and $52.3 million internationally for a worldwide total of $75.2 million.
Critical reception
Revolutionary Road received generally positive reviews from critics.
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said:
| “ | It takes the skill of stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio and director Sam Mendes to get this film to a place where it involves and moves us—which it finally does—but it is a near thing... Justin Haythe's screenplay does many good things, but it can't escape the arch lingo of the time... and that in turn makes the film's concerns initially feel dated and outmoded as well... Encouraged by Mendes' artful direction, his gift for eliciting naturalness, the core of this film finally cries out to us today, makes us see that the notion of characters struggling with life, with the despair of betraying their best selves because of what society will or won't allow, is as gripping and relevant now as it ever was. Or ever will be. | ” |
Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News said:
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