Revolutionary Road

These are the film notes for last night's screening:


Revolutionary Road

USA 2009 (119 minutes)
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Richard Easton and Jay O Sanders

Awards and Nominations
* Nominated for three Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor (Michael Shannon)
* Won Golden Globe for Best Actress (Kate Winslet)
* A further five wins and 21 nominations including BAFTA nominations for Best Actress (Kate Winslet) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Justin Hayes)

In 1950s Connecticut Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) works discontendely for a Manhattan computer company while his wife April (Kate Winslet) once had ambitions to be an actress but is now a housewife who takes part in amateur theatricals. In the throes of a quarter life crisis they plan to move to Paris to retrieve their lives, but while April becomes hooked on her pipe dream Frank gets cold feet.

There had been several earlier unsuccessful attempts to film the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, but it was only after Kate Winslet told her husband Sam Mendes that she would like to play the part of April Wheeler that he agreed to direct it, and only when DiCaprio had been cast as Frank Wheeler that the film actually went into production. Winslet and DiCaprio made their names in Titanic (1997), and since then both actors have had successful careers in a number of high profile films although this is the first time that they had worked together again. Nonetheless the friendship that they had developed while making Titanic endured, and this helped them portray a couple so convincingly in this film. Both actors received praise for their performances, but it was Winslet who won the awards (although as she had been nominated for Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Reader she was ineligible for a nomination for her performance in this film, and she competed against herself in the BAFTAs, winning the Best Actress award for her performance in The Reader). The shoot was so emotionally and physically draining for DiCaprio that he postponed his next film for two months.

Revolutionary Road was Yates’ first novel, and was a finalist in the National book Award of 1961 (Catch-22 was also shortlisted). Despite being championed by writers as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, William Styron and Tennessee William and receiving almost universal critical acclaim for his work, none of his novels sold well and all went out of print after he died in 1992. However in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in his work: in the UK Nick Hornby made one of the suicidal characters in his 2005 novel A Long Way Down carry a copy of Revolutionary Road so that it could be discovered on his corpse.

Sam Mendes made his name as a stage director with award-winning productions in both the UK and the USA. In 1999 as a novice film maker he directed American Beauty which won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Film. He followed this with Road to Perdition (2002) which included Paul Newman’s final screen appearance in a major role. It has just been announced that Mendes will direct the as-yet-untitled next Bond film, which is due for release in 2011.