Times have changed, Kate has lost weight, and Leo has lost his childishness, so this new film Revolutionary Road seems very suitable for them to play.
The story takes place in the United States in the mid-1950s. April (Kate Winslet), a woman full of actress dreams, meets Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man who doesn't know what she wants to do. The pursuit of freedom, then got married, had children, moved to the country, and lived on a street called Revolutionary. They became part of many ordinary families.
To support his family, Frank takes a sales job in town that he doesn't like, but doesn't hate, but doesn't feel like. He wears the same suit, tie, and top hat as everyone else every day, and rides trains, elevators, and work with thousands of expressionless Franks. And April became a housewife seriously, and also participated in performances as an amateur, but such performances were of course far from her dream of being an actress. They are like puppets of life, unable to walk at the mercy of the established destiny.
Such a tepid, disciplined life gave the once-passionate couple's marriage a red light. Frank hooks up with a chick from the company just for sex. And every time he came home from get off work, he and April were always arguing, until April asked him to stop talking, she needed to think. And the result she thought about was to move.
She offered Frank to drop everything and move to Paris. It doesn't matter if it's Paris or anywhere else, anyway, they need a new life, a new environment, to get back their enthusiasm. They want:
Feel things, really feel them.
It works surprisingly fast. Before moving, the couple had already begun to see hope. They told their neighbors about their relocation plans and went home to laugh at the puzzled and contemptuous expressions of the secular neighbor couple. In the company, Frank and his colleagues talked about the plan to move to Paris, and he was also puzzled and contemptuous, so he felt that he was different from these ordinary people in suits, ties and hats. Only the son of a real estate agent couple with a Ph.D. in mathematics who was diagnosed with mental illness can understand their thinking. This further shows that the couple is different in the eyes of others and themselves.
It's such a great feeling! Frank and April finally drew a clear line between themselves and the world around them. They finally saw the light that was about to break through the stereotypes, and finally felt the excitement like the eve of the great revolution! Frank's job has become very handy since then, and he even got praise from the boss and a chance for promotion.
Of course, Frank initially rejected the boss because he wanted to move to Paris and get rid of the "hopeless emptiness" that life brought him. But the boss's words made him have to face the real life again.
Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness. You want to play house you got to have a job. You want to play nice house, very sweet house, you got to have a job you don' t like.
Frank knows that these are facts.
It was at this stall that April became pregnant.
In that era, abortion was not as accessible as it is today in a regular hospital, and the technology was far less advanced than it is today. In fact, it wasn't until 1973 that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed abortion to be legalized. April bought the aspirator, and she told Frank that as long as the abortion was done while the fetus was very young in the first twelve weeks, it would be fine.
With such a situation, Frank was of course shaken. Of course, this is just a layout of the director. At present, although the flow of people is no longer a big problem, we can still find many other big problems and turn them into excuses for us to give up the revolution and continue our normal life.
This is undoubtedly a huge blow for April. She asked Frank,
Tell me the truth, Frank. Remember that we used to live by it. And you know what's so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they've lived without it. No one forgets the truth, Frank. They just get better at lying.
But that didn't change anything, even if she ran alone into the woods all night to find the answer, there was still no result. Because in real life, Frank's behavior is so normal.
Frank knows what he wants, he found his place, he's just fine. Married, two kids, it should be enough. It is for him. And he's right; we were never special or destined for anything at all.
When Frank woke up in the morning, April was like a different person, a standard housewife with no emotions. She cooks breakfast, she smiles, she cares about her husband's progress... It's a little puzzled, a little disturbing, and a little satisfying. In fact, this is the calm on the eve of the revolution. April has made up his mind that he does not want a third child, whether he moves or not. As the psychiatric math Ph.D. pointed out, the couple lost the courage to reform, and the only thing that made the psychiatric man happy was "I'm not gonna be that kid" (by the way, the madman's performance It's really wonderful). April is naturally not happy to make another life part of the puppet life. After her husband went to work after breakfast, she tragically made an abortion by herself, but unexpectedly, she died.
At the end of the film, the elderly couple of real estate agents were filmed. The wife was still making comments on the special couple of the year, still with confusion and contempt, and humorously, the husband turned the volume of the hearing aid to the minimum, So the world is quiet. It comes to mind that, by contrast, April was not so lucky. Every time she and Frank disagreed, Frank, the salesman, began to ramble on those big truths, so that April couldn't calm down and think about the essence of the problem.
Anyway, the result is that this special couple living in Revolutionary Road did not escape the mercy of the worldly fate and gave up the revolutionary plan. This is actually somewhat similar to Little Children starring Kate Wislet in 2006.
In that film, the heroine played by Kate has become a full-fledged housewife despite having a master's degree in English literature. In the process of raising her children, she met a man who also once had dreams and passions, but is now a househusband.
Both are tired of the mundane life and decide to elope with their respective children. Unexpectedly, that night, the male protagonist who used to be the main force of the rugby team fell off the skateboard he had always wanted to try and was injured, so he found that the passion was only a moment, and life would continue. And Kate also realized that she couldn't break away from the role of mother and wife because of her daughter's "disappearance". So, the elopement is over. The two continue to live according to the original trajectory.
However, the difference is that in Little Children, it can be felt that director Todd Field did not oppose plain life, but regarded the two adults who tried to elope as Little Children who did not grow up. And in Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes, the director who once directed American Beauty, should be on the side of the camp who dares to ignore the pressure around him and change his life.
I think everyone is internally conflicted about this. It is pointless to judge which kind of life is right. Whether you choose to join the WTO or be born, don't care what others think, as long as you are willing to do it.
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