Revolutionary Road
Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple in 1950s suburban Connecticut, plan to start over in Paris, but their marriage collapses under disappointment and denial.
Academy Awards, Best Supporting Actor nomination, 2009
Frank and April Wheeler are a bright young couple who bought a house on Revolutionary Road expecting a larger life than the one they now lead. April proposes they sell up and move to Paris, where Frank could find himself and she would support them, but a pregnancy, a promotion, and mutual resentment erode the plan. As the escape recedes, their evenings turn to argument, affairs, and a quiet cruelty that leaves both stranded.
The film is a study of how a shared fantasy can hold a marriage together and then destroy it once reality intrudes, and of the way the only character judged insane, a former mathematician, names the emptiness the others cannot admit. It offers a clinician much to consider about idealisation, disavowal, and the defensive uses of the couple. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2009 and is based on the novel Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
Director
Sam Mendes
Sam Mendes is a British film director who came to cinema from the theatre, where he spent years directing stage revivals before his first feature. He is known for close attention to the family and its surfaces: the composed exterior, the disappointment underneath, the things kept concealed within a household. His debut feature, American Beauty (1999), won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director. He has since directed Skyfall and 1917.
Details
- 2008
- United States
- English
- Film