Revolutionary Road has just recently started getting advertised over here in the UK, and something worthy of note is that the ads don’t seem to be focusing on the DeCaprio/Winslet pairing. They, as you most likely already know, were the stars of Titanic, the highest-grossing movie of all time, and it’s the first movie they’ve been in since, over a decade later. It’s a sure-fire way to fill seats (Especially with old women), so why haven’t they taken that route? The answer’s fairly simple. Revolutionary Road is not for fans of Titanic. Titanic was an epic romance movie, set in front of an epic backdrop, and Revolutionary Road is neither of those things. It’s about unhappiness, starring two characters who are completely miserable with their lives, and have all but given up on their hopes and dreams. Set in 1950s Connecticut, we meet Frank and April Wheeler; married, two kids, him the breadwinner, her the housewife, both of them trapped in a life they despise.

This isn’t new material for Sam Mendes (The director, as well as Winslet’s husband), of course. His directoral debut was the fantastic American Beauty, which starred Kevin Spacey as a man frustrated with his surburban life. Revolutionary Road is not quite as good as that film, but still manages to exceed it in some ways. The cast, for one. DeCaprio and Winslet are two of the finest actors of this generation, and they prove it with this film more than they ever have before. Their performances are Oscar-worthy (Winslet has already won the Golden Globe, and is tipped for the big one too), and succeed more than I could tell you at getting across the frustration and the pain the characters feel. Other than them, the best performance comes from Michael Shannon. He plays John Givings, the son of the realtor that sold them the house, Helen (Also portrayed excellently by Kathy Bates – one of those actresses you never really think about as being particularly good, but who is always great to watch in any movie). John spends most of his time in an insane asylum, but is let out occasionally to have dinner with his parents and the Wheelers; Helen thinks spending time with a “normal” family like Frank and April’s will help him learn how to function. John, however, isn’t insane; just ahead of the curve. He sees straight through everyone’s façade, and represents the next generation; his parents type of society is in its dying years, and will soon be replaced by the 1960s, and a culture that would have suited him much better. He calls the Wheelers on their bullshit, and his scenes are fantastic to watch.

Revolutionary Road has been compared to the TV show Mad Men, and they share many similarities: set in the same era (Where everyone, ever, smoked like chimneys), starring a man who works an office job in the city, and his wife, who is unhappy with the traditional gender role she seems to have been assigned. If you like one (And you should; both this film and the show are fantastic), you are likely to enjoy the other. There are differences, though. Revolutionary Road is all about the home life, only occasionally showing work, whereas the work main character Don Draper does in Mad Men is a major part of the show, Sopranos-esque in the way it shows the contrast between the two worlds. One of the most major differences is that Frank Wheeler hates his job. When he first meets April, at the start of the film, he has dreams, aspirations. He wants to move to Paris, where, with rigour and zest, he describes people as “alive” in comparison to the dull people that surround them in America. Much like John Givings, Frank and April are ahead of their time, but the difference is that they are unwilling to live out their dreams for fear of upsetting the status quo and ending up like John.

I’m wary to give out too much of the plot, as coming into it fresh was a good experience for me, but there’s a point where Frank and April come very close to attaining their goal, only for it to be snatched away by fate. While DeCaprio plays Frank as becoming more resigned to his fate, despite being unhappy, April clearly becomes more destroyed as the movie goes on. It’s worth mentioning the performances again; DeCaprio and Winslet both play their parts to perfection, to the point where you completely forget it’s fictional, they are the Wheelers, trapped in a miserable, dead-end life, almost powerless to escape the day-to-day monotony. The way the film ends is harsh, but ultimately necessary.

Revolutionary Road is a great movie, and one of the best of 2008. There are many ways to interpret it; some might say it’s about how people were held down by American society in those days, while others could proclaim that Frank and April get punished by their own cowardice. Whatever the case, the movie is miserable, pessimistic, and ultimately hopeless. Not for the Titanic crowd.

Rating:

“I knew a guy who was dyslexic, but he was also cross-eyed, so everything came out right. “

I’ve always had a slightly morbid fascination with the “dregs”, if you will, of Western society. The poor white trash, with little money, lots of prejudices, and a violent attitude (Now is probably a good time to point out I don’t look down on people because of their economic situation or anything, but if I met someone who was honestly racist or homophobic there’s a good chance we wouldn’t be hanging out much). Gummo focuses entirely on these types of people; every character is broken in some way, whether they’re addicted to drugs, mentally retarded, or just kind of creepy. The plot synopsis on IMDb is “Lonely residents of a tornado-stricken Ohio town wander the deserted landscape trying to fulfill their boring, nihilistic lives.” but this is more than a synopsis; it’s pretty much the entire plot. Nobody is going anywhere or trying to achieve anything, and you get the feeling like the events that occur are just normality in the day-to-day lives of these people. Anyone who starts to watch this expecting any form of convention is going to be disappointed.

Gummo is an incredibly surreal and odd film, in regards to the way it’s filmed and the usage of different camera styles, but it’s also incredibly realistic in its depiction of white trash. One particular scene that stood out to me was the second scene with the Bunny Boy, where he meets two young children, no more than nine years old, playing. The way they yell and shout and swear, despite their age (One of them asking if police are mad because “we get more pussy than they do” is perhaps the funniest and best example of this), is something I’ve seen before, in children with poor mothers, living in council houses. The movie is extremely accurate in the way it depicts these characters, but it isn’t inviting the audience to laugh or sneer at them; if anything, we sympathise. I think the setting and the backstory has something to do with this; it’s set in Xenia, Ohio, which was hit by a tornado in 1974. The movie moves the tornado’s arrival to only a few years before the events of the film (Assuming that the movie was set in the present, 1997. No specific date is given, and it could fairly easily take place in the late 70s or early 80s). The death and destruction the tornado caused clearly sent the town into a stupor from which it hasn’t recovered; and all that seems to exist there are the disturbing, broken men, women, and children we see throughout the film.

Gummo was absolutely savaged by the critics on first release, and when you read the reviews it’s easy to see why; they all see Harmony Korine, the writer/director, as trying to make a huge statement or something, and they’re just not getting it. One review even says “Gummo is a movie of moments.” and tries to bring this up as if it’s a negative thing, rather than the entire point. Werner Herzog says it best with this quote: “It’s not going to dominate world cinema, but so what?” Many of these reviews also seem to miss the humour in the movie. It takes being able to make you laugh and cry at the same time and stretches both as far as they can go. It’s disturbing, creepy, almost downright terrifying in places, but at the same time is completely hilarious. One scene in particular, involving a boy, his mother, and tap-dancing, is deeply tragic, but what’s happening on screen is funny enough to make you laugh out loud. The reality of the film still stands up throughout all of this, though; if someone had decided to tell me it was a documentary before I saw it, there’s a good chance I might have believed them for a while.

There is also, in the film’s surprisingly short running time (88 minutes or so), some of the best art direction ever seen on screen. The settings are perfect, in their way, and feel completely natural. One example always used by people, it seems, is a scene set in a bathroom near the end of the film, where there is a slice of bacon sellotaped to the wall. At first it’s confusing, but the more you think about it, it becomes clear that yeah – that character, or another member of his family. probably would have sellotaped some bacon to the wall. Despite this ridiculous attention to detail, the scenery never calls attention to itself; there are never any shots of just locations in that way. Gummo is entirely character-driven, and these amazing sets just serve to make these characters seem more three-dimensional and real. Oddly enough, for such a surreal, unconventional film, it has a lot of quotable lines, which I will not reveal here to you, but which you will know if you ever watch it.

The assortment of characters in Gummo aren’t something I’ve really paid that much attention to so far, other than to say they’re realistic. They’re more than that, though, they’re fully-fledged, brilliantly written, and instantly recognisable to fans. The main characters (Or at least, the ones that crop up the most) are Solomon and Tummler, who spend most of their time shooting cats and sniffing glue, but to talk about them would be to barely scratch the surface (And, to be honest, this is one of those films where it’s best to keep a fair amount of it a surprise).

When it comes down to it, what is Gummo about? It’s about a town stagnating, struggling to cope after a terrible disaster. It’s about the odd things that you can do when you don’t really have anything to live for. Mostly, though, it’s about people. It’s about these people. It’s about these people, and the lives they lead. It feels like nothing more than a short snapshot into the lives of these people, which we leave as quickly and suddenly as we enter. They don’t change. Hell, why would they? To them, we weren’t even there. Even when characters talk to the camera it feels like they’re staring past us and looking at a wall.