..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

15 Weeks To Go:
As The Season Turns

Last time we checked in on The Season, everyone was waiting for the last few films to grace us with their presence.  And they have… and still… an odd silence… critics not sure just how far to stick their necks…

But the ongoing theme of the entire season remains… that was okay/not bad/pretty good...

This will all shake out in the week or two to come, as more eyeballs and more wagging tongues have their moments.  But for now, ambivalence seems to rule.

It is that ambivalence that has made a near-lock of Slumdog Millionaire, which would be seen as a strong underdog in other seasons, but as one of the few films that truly wears its heart (and movie love) on its sleeve, it has stepped into a front-running role.  Anticipation for Benjamin Button and even a fear of Australia are similarly based on the idea that they will pull the trigger in a big way.  (The love and fear of Luhrmann remain unavoidably within millimeters of each other.) 

Which brings me to Revolutionary Road, one of those “not-quite” films of this season.

One of the misfortunes of being at a Q&A after seeing the film the first time was listening to each of the actors talk about things in the novel that were very important to them… which were not seen in the film. 

And in that, a central thesis about why the film really fails to knock it out of the park.  It’s got a serious case of Mendes-itis.  This is the condition in which it looks great, is perfectly cast, well performed… and somehow has none of the soul it keeps screaming at the audience that it wants us to feel it has.

I don’t just blame Mendes.  The screenplay, by Justin Haythe (whose only other credit is the equally emotionally-stinted and utterly unwatchable Redford/Mirren/Dafoe disaster, The Clearing) has its moments, specifically when Michael Shannon is the madman who tells the truth of everyone’s soul.  But it misses the mark completely when it comes to capturing the keys to the story we are watching.  It’s like we are expected, as an audience, to simply fill in the backstory for ourselves.  But unlike a tale like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf – a movie this film feels like it desperately wants to be - the lack of detailed backstory does not end up defining the story that is right up front.

Revolutionary Road started to lose my trust fairly early on, when the image of a child in the lives of this couple seemed to be a curve in the order of “they lost their baby and this is why they are so broken” because this couple behaved nothing like parents, even parents of that era.  This is a movie in which the kids are really an afterthought, disappearing like inconvenient furniture when a scene calls for more conflict that kids shouldn’t overhear. 

The bigger frustration of the piece comes when we finally get around to realizing what is really going on between this couple (with matching kids… or Malibu Corvettes) and then have to realize that the movie missed the movie it was wanting to be.  What we got was a pretentious War of the Roses with Michael Shannon as an even better version of the Danny DeVito character.  What the filmmaker seems to have wanted was some combination of The Hours and an American Beauty prequel. 

In fact, the American Beauty prequel is a really strong theme, in my eyes, and the artifice of that Oscar winner, which befitted the style of screenwriter Alan Ball, visits itself more and more as Revolutionary Road moves along.  The theme of the stilted, disconnected suburban couple remains, though the kids aren’t teens, so the two teen girls get replaced by a 20ish daughter of two fine screenwriters with an even more famous grandfather.  As noted, and scoffed at in a Hot Blog comment, I feel like the frontal nudity by Ms Kazan in this film is a reach for seriousness and comes off as nothing but prurient.  Meanwhile, Mendes doesn’t allow us into his characters’ minds as they wander into various sexual behaviors... which is terribly important, as the whole story is predicated on their submerged feelings… exactly the kind of feelings which become beyond control – whether in a show of release or further repression – in the midst of sexual focus. 

The performances are mixed.  Kate Winslet can’t do much wrong and she does a lot better than that here.  It is another excellent performance, though it is still possible that The Reader will supercede her work here.   (Another theory is that she will go Supporting for The Reader, looking to get both.)  Leonardo diCaprio - in regards to whom I do not join the “he’s too young to be seen as a serious adult” camp – doesn’t quite work for me here.  In Mad Men terms, we need Don Draper and we get Pete Campbell.  He’s too young to just be worn out… and he has no backstory to help us see how he feels so very trapped.

Speaking of Mad Men, the comparisons are no small problem. The crowd that votes for Oscar also happens the be the one group that actually watches that TV series. And comparisons to Kate Winslet's work in the significantly more demanding Little Children - trapped in a loveless marriage, with a kid, seeking a way out but oh so guilty about it - are also inevitable.

Another problem is the end of the film, which I won’t get into here… but which is very much of the period and again, is not supported enough by the film to ring true.

And this is the massive frustration of this film.  It looks great.  The performances, even with some reservations about Leo, are excellent.  Kathy Bates does her best with some weak writing for her character, which makes it a caricature.  David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn work it out as the couple next door… but again, get reduced to too broad strokes.  And yes, there is Michael Shannon, who should sail to an Oscar nod in part because he does what he does so brilliantly… and in part because he is the only character in the movie who gets to deliver something that really grabs the audience.

Mendes remains on the great frustrators of this movie lover.  He has such good taste and he gets a lot out of his actors. And he is drawn to such tough material… which I love. But he won’t pull the trigger.  He wouldn’t force Tom Hanks to be a real killer or make his son a future priest, trying to find redemption for his father by working for God… and it killed Road To Perdition.  And he never found the overt politics and personal politics inside of the great idea of Jarhead… and it killed that movie.  Now he takes a novel said to rival the great works of the 60s, dealing with the conflict of repression in a society of ruthless ambition… and somehow, he just won’t get on with it.  We don’t really get to spend time with any of his characters’ demons… just the often childish acting out that they force.  I get plenty of that every day.  Oprah goes deeper.

There will be plenty of fans of Revolutionary Road.  It is a really good movie for the space that so many critics are in, preferring emotion that it explained to you rather than felt.  For better or worse, the history of movies that do that is not one of great success pushing for Oscars.  Going back five years, only Atonement, Finding Neverland, and on some level, The Hours, showed that restraint and got into the Best Picture race.  But Atonement was the only romance last year, Neverland was driven by Depp fever and brilliant timing by Miramax, and The Hours was a rangey, smart drama with an actress pile-on in a year when the only other movie with women in it in a real way was Chicago, which was more flash than drama.

Revolutionary Road has a much tougher road ahead, as it battles so many other weighty period pictures, from Frost/Nixon to Ben Button to Australia and even to Doubt, which is looking stronger as things move forward.

So there is the view at the moment… more to come… next week will be Thanks For Giving Us A Break for most of us who are on the awards battlefield.  Let’s just hope there are no more turkeys.

 

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November 14, 2007
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