Revolutionary Road

Image via Wikipedia

  Synopsis

1947, Greenwich Village, New York. At a bohemian party, Frank Wheeler meets April. They dance. Jump to 1954: Frank has now married April, and he anxiously watches her and their friends Shep and Milly in a very poor amateur dramatics production. Frank’s comments afterwards lead into a row. April struggles with her failed theatrical ambition. Flash back to how they bought their house in Revolutionary Road – a housing estate in Connecticut which is just the reverse of its name. Feeling trapped in suburbia, Frank and April take their frustrations out on one another. They now have two children and Frank works at the same city company his father did – exactly what he planned not to do. Frank hates his job but brightens his day with a secretary, whom he spends his 30th birthday with, ending in a sexual encounter but not a particularly romantic one. He returns home late to his family to find a changed April, who is waiting with the children to make the rest of the day special. While he has been at work, April has concocted a plan, inspired by some old photos. She recalled how Frank is inspired by Paris and she suggests that they could go and live there, and that he could spend time thinking about what he wants to do with his life. They have savings and she claims she could obtain well paid clerical work.

They enjoy telling people of their radical plan, and their reactions. Their friends Shep and Milly are surprised but secretly disapproving and rather saddened. Frank and April have night of passion recalling their early courting. Their estate agent Mrs Givings keeps in regular touch; she asks if Frank and April would they meet her son, who is in a psychiatric hospital? The couple agree, but John makes perceptive comments about the real nature of April and Frank’s intentions to go away. Frank and April are drawn to him and feel understood by him.

But April falls pregnant. She says that this must not stop their plan to go to Europe, and that she knows how to abort it herself. She has delayed telling Frank until two weeks before the abortion is no longer safe to carry out. Frank has unwittingly caught the eye of a senior boss at work, and he is taken to dinner and offered promotion. April first learns of it at a beach scene with Milly and Shep. Frank is non committal but seems to be considering taking the job, and not keen to discuss it with his wife.

Frank and April have a very big row. Frank accuses April of being emotionally unsteady and needing psychiatric help. The outcome of the row is that Frank persuades April to give up the Europe plan for the foreseeable future. The deadline for the safe self abortion has passed.

The four friends go out but Milly becomes ill and Frank who takes her home, leaving April and Shep to get drunk, dance and have sex in the car. Shep says that he has always loved April but April does  not respond to this. There’s a second visit from the Givings. John too bluntly spells out why he thinks April and Frank have changed their minds about Paris. He is painfully acute. He angers Franks and causes embarrassment to his mother. April and Frank have another row after they leave, where Frank admits his affair. It is so bad that April goes into the woods by the house for several hours to think. In the morning, she is changed. She makes Frank breakfast, a model of sweetness. It is the day of Frank’s big meeting at work. The Wheeler children are with Milly and Shep. But then April performs the abortion on herself. She dies in hospital – the intended outcome.

One year on: Shep and Milly talk to the Wheeler’s replacements, telling them the rest of the story: that Frank moved to the city with his children, but they see little of him now. Finally, we see Mr and Mrs Givings. Mrs Givings is pleased with the new couple at the Wheelers’ old house – and saying how (despite what she said a the time) that she didn’t really like the Wheelers. Her husband turns off his hearing aid as she rambles.

Premise

Frank and April wish to escape the ennui of settled life in the suburbs to regain their feeling of bohemian freedom and specialness. April believes her plan will save her flailing marriage. The obstacles are largely external. As they have become entrenched in a community that they believe they are not like, there is no-one – not neighbours or at work – who understands and encourages their decision to move to Paris. They are made to feel that the plan is a rather silly and ill thought out one. It is thought strange that Aril will support Frank financially. The offer of promotion in New York  for Frank makes him reconsider the sense of the Europe plan. April’s third child also poses an obstacle, which she seeks to remedy through killing the child. As the story progresses, April  is considered by Frank – if not the audience – to be mentally unstable, like John.

The story works if one believes that the Paris idea is incredulous, although the script lays out some sensible planning by April – she knows they have enough money for six months of living and they are giving themselves a  few months to prepare for the trip. It works if one believes that April is too imbalanced to cope with a third child and is unfit to go abroad, or that help for her is not available. It works if one has sympathy with Frank  – both his personality and his choices. But if going to Paris does not seem incredulous; if having another baby does not appear an ultimate obstacle ( as April says – they do have babies in Europe), then the story breaks down. If the audience believes that April and Frank – together or even alone – could have other choices – then the dramatic conflict falls short.

We also need to believe in Frank and April’s specialness. We need to really feel that they come from another world to Revolutionary Road. The early part of their relationship and the character of their Beatnik type Greenwich Village life need to be firmly set for the rest of the story to work. The scene setting up their pre Revolutionary Road existence and their courtship is too short. The exchange they have when they meet makes them sound an odd couple: April wants to be an actress; she perceptively asks Frank: what does he care  about  - not how he earns money. He does not answer this interesting question well. She says that he is the most interesting man she has ever met, but we see no evidence of why she should say that.

It is unclear that we have jumped to the future, initially, when we reach the play scene. The audience watching may wonder what led to their getting married – for the party scene is not suffice. The play scene is seminal, but we do not get the sense of how poorly acted the play is, and how bad April feels. Or rather – we get the sense of April feeling bad but we are not sure why. The row that follows seems to be precipitating something, as if there are preceding missing scenes. We tell from the dialogue things which we haven’t yet any evidence of, and the row seems like we should know more about the couple before we understand why their marriage is so strained.

What the finale says – with the turning off of the hearing aid – is perplexing. What is it trying to say about friendships in suburbia? Mrs Givings’s friendship seems false. Does the new couple mean that the Wheelers are replaces in all senses? Also perplexing is such a brief and nonspeaking last scene with Frank. We do not know how he or his children cope with the death of April and what moving to the city symbolises. Is it further giving in to the settled model of life, or is it actually working out for them in New York, finding a niche in a smaller change but accepting and embracing the conventional life?

The message is a negative one: that you will not get to where you want to be. You did not have the talent you believed. You can never escape the inertia of settled life – you will die in it now (April) or later (Frank). The literary quality and deeply emotional performances required will appeal to an audience who perhaps understand the Wheeler’s scenario only to well. It is a serious sounding, intelligent film but whose message is that of hopelessness and helplessness, and perhaps that being in touch with your feelings and speaking out of the norm makes you crazy, like John. It is not only a very depressing message, but as it stands, the script does not convey this convincingly.

Structure

We immediately see what starts off the story – the meeting of the couple, yet this is not wholly a hook because nothing very interesting happens in that meeting. Then we are presented with the incident which shows how having reached desperation, April tries to find a way out for them both. Thus the play becomes the inciting incident, and leads into a turning point. But there’s not enough to turn from yet. The play seems a potentially stronger starting point than their first meeting. What might a flashback scene to the Wheeler’s courtship days after the play contribute? The plan of April’s seems to offer a solution to the marriage problem set up in the first few pages, and that solution is worked out – reactions from others, further plans – and then the obstacles to that scheme are introduced. John’s visits offer a commentary for the audience on what is happening with the Wheelers. His first visit is helpful; the second precipitates a crisis. Inbetween, the second act moves through the increasing obstacles, adding an affair by both Wheelers to their promotion and pregnancy. The major row between the Wheelers seems to have ended in a strange calm, and perhaps a false sense of positive conclusion is given. But the final crisis of April’s effective suicide has little rounding up time afterwards. The audience needs it. We see that Shep and Milly have replaced the Wheelers, as have the Givings, but the very end is puzzling structurally in that we see two minor characters who give little insight into the summation of the film’s themes.

Character

The fulcrum of the story hangs on Frank and April’s feeling of difference, superiority and free spirits. Frank does some despicable things – some of his early lines such as ‘Well is wasn’t exactly a triumph’ after April’s play, to his rant on her being a failed actress, do not make him sympathetic. His chat up lines with April are not engaging. She says that she married Frank because he once made her laugh at a party, but he doesn’t make her or us laugh. Frank has an affair – being unfaithful not only to his family but using the secretary as a love toy, without professing any love or intent for this young colleague, Maureen. He often seems patronising, manipulative even, of his wife, to the point of calling her crazy and driving her to her death.

April is more appealing. She sounds interesting right from her first line. She tries to rescue the marriage with the lovely meal on Frank’s birthday and the Paris plan. She immediately agrees to meet John Givings without judgment of his being in a psychiatric hospital. She’s not afraid to be different, even – as she says – if that makes her crazy, too (p.53). She alone has the courage to do something different, although the DIY abortion seems a bit uncharacteristic – would she have chosen her own death over leaving Frank?

Again – what made them fall in love and marry is not clear. The much used motif of dancing in a film  is often not a convincing and sufficient way of showing love blooming, and it doesn’t show love staying enough to be married seven years later.

John Givings is potentially a fascinating person. He’s acute but he seems actually mad by the stained teeth and braying laugh. His Mum and Dad – father particular – don’t have a major contribution and seem conventional and bland.

Shep and Milly: There’s no real hint that Shep loves April up til their scene in the car. Having them alone through bad parking (Shep’s car is blocked in but not Frank) seems a little contrived. It is unclear why or what their reaction to he Wheeler’s intent to move away is. Is it really immaturity, as they say, or a feeling of wishing they could do the same? As Shep later reveals his love for April, one surmises that this informs his reaction – but what are Milly’s tears for? And what do they feel about April’s death? More between Shep and April would be interesting.

Frank’s colleagues sound  lazy though friendly and that they make work for him more bearable. Franks seems to get on with his colleagues – and he is of the same lazy, here for the money attitude as they. Frank therefore has outside friends but Aprils only friend is part of a mutual couple – she has no-one of her own. For April and Frank to be isolated, the suicide needs to feel that they are different from and misunderstood by their friends and neighbours. This doesn’t come across.

 Dialogue

It is almost dialectical – a 1950s American speak – with plenty of ‘goddamnit’s.  Frank speaks intensely, as if he always wants to talk about everything. But somehow, his character and his lines don’t sit comfortably. At the party in 1947, when he says :”Honey – if I had the answer to that one, I bet I’d bore us both to death in half an hour” feels like this is something endearing and revealing. Is he saying – I have so many interests it would take ages to tell you them? Or I’m into nothing and everything? April sets herself up as an actress, whereas Frank seems to be not drawn to anything, and he mentions nothing artistic. It is a off hand, irritating kind of reply which could have the effect of losing the audience’s sympathy for Frank. It also is a critical line in conveying what their relationship is built on – but it serves to only suggest that it built on nothing. And the rest of the script is lost by not getting this right. April says ‘You’re the most wonderful and valuable thing in the world – you’re a man” (p.29). To modern ears, this sounds strange. It sounds strange generally. Is she making up for saying he wasn’t a man in their first row? is she flattering the male chauvinist ego? Or does she believe such a statement? The arguments don’t always feel comfortably flowing and natural, again potentially losing the audience early on.

Pace

This is set by the characters’ emotions not by actions, although the two week abortion decision adds a chronological pace to the story. As Paris too is n the autumn, an awareness of time is clear but we’re not told what month(s) the story is set in so it is unclear whether Paris is many months or just a couple away.  It is also not clear that there has been a jump at the start of the story between the first and second scenes. An audience is acclimatising itself to the material, and it may be that they miss the important and understated early cues.

Visual Grammar

The story is generally told in a chronological, linear narrative, except for two flashbacks. It is particularly character and emotionally driven story. Much takes place around the home. the first scene doesn’t not take advantage of the visuals fully to set the scene; as above – the audience is too soon into the film. The text of the script spells out bohemia but when on screen, this needs to be stronger perhaps to make the point because one reads the start of a script looking for details in the ‘business’ or description of scene, but not when viewing a film. The bridge is a lovely visual picture but the contrast with the Greenwich apartment and Revolutionary Road could be made much stronger. Otherwise there are only a few visually telling scenes – we do not read much descriptions of rooms or settings.  It would work well as a play but it might be nice to explore what could be added cinematically to the story.

Conclusion

A study of a complex relationship wrestling with how to live a truly connected, interesting life is an engaging premise, and could be a compelling drama, though it needs some important changes, especially at either end.

A peculiarly 1950s story or one we can still believe in? Is the period setting important? only the realisation of the film can answer that but 50s details are not often included in the script.

Is there more choice now for suburban couples? Is it less strange for a woman to support her husband now? If it remains in the 1950s, could more be made of the setting?

Who will see it? Quality film and literary lovers of a mature age (i.e. not average teenage fare) – especially  as the source material is a well known and considered book. It has award potential – for portraying harrowing emotions and madness. Casting and strong performances are vital to the success of this. Yet problems with the story remain. At 110 pages, the story could be extended – it is not too long at present and extra scenes to establish the relationship are necessary to appreciate its demise and the feeling of otherness that drives the Wheelers.

Hollywood often seeks a positive ending  and a character arc – but Revolutionary Road does not offer this. But the type of person who might see this perhaps will not seek a happy ending so much as say, a romantic comedy viewer. It certainly sends the audience out of the theatre  on a bleak note. A concern is that no-one seems to have learned or gained anything by the end. April’s is not a death that achieves anything, unless one could argued it frees Frank from his mad wife to make choices for himself and the children. It is not the beautiful death scene of Iris – with her speech and the image of the stone hitting the river, at last released from the darkness of her illness. It  is not a death that makes a hero; it is not sacrificial. It doesn’t illustrate the folly of a system and it is not deliverance (cf one flew over the cuckoo’s nest). So the question is – (as Frank asks) what is the point?

Although period, it needn’t be a large budget as only external shots are used and there’s little need for extras, stunts, and SFX. Although an American story, if the film is intended for global exhibition it may be worth noting that the Connecticut suburbs and Greenwich village may not be as well known for all as the story seems to presume – and strengthening those worlds (and perhaps showing the desired life in Paris) would assist.

The sad ending with so little of Frank and instead showing us the secondary characters is puzzling and unsatisfactory; so either April does not die or something needs to be learned or achieved with her tragedy. The beginning needs work to establish the relationship and perhaps a stronger connection with the audience and the couple for us to care about them.