Couple falls in love. Gets married. Moves to suburbia. Has two kids. Man toils in a job at the company his father worked at for 20 years.
Revolutionary Road is not the portrayal of a happy family. The movie opens with a fight between Frank and April Wheeler on the side of Route 12 in Connecticut. Frank almost strikes April, but instead hits the roof the car instead. From this point on I found myself pushing myself back in my seat to get away from the hate that seethed from just beneath that which the Wheeler’s acknowledged to one another.
Whether the Wheeler’s had grown apart or had simply never loved one another does not matter by the end of the movie. It is clear that for them to remain together one of them will have to sacrifice so much of who he/she is that the changed person would no longer be who they were. This reminds me of a scene from Marley & Me where Jennifer Aniston’s character says that she never imagined she would have to sacrifice so much of who she was to be a good wife and mother. April simply seems not able to accept this, although her situation seems much more isolated.
It is sad to see Frank unable to accept how miserable April truly is. Is this a 1950s family dynamic insensitivity? Or is it something much bigger? Their problems seem much larger than his selfish approach to his family.
Nothing was bigger than the Wheeler’s to the Wheelers. Life was about achieving their dreams, but before they even realized they weren’t fulfilling their dreams they had sold out to suburbia.
This movie mad me think a lot about how impossibly hard it must be at times to be happy with someone else. It is hard from day to day to be happy alone, let alone caring for a spouse and children. There has to be a huge amount of understanding, trust, and effort visibly put forth. By no means am I saying that I don’t think it is worth it, but this movie cemented for me the importance of seeing the best in the person you are with. The importance of listening. The importance of not being scared to take a risk.
Final note: There was no mention of religion in this movie. It seemed like a deliberate statement. There is a default set of values and a community of support that comes along with being religious. Even if you are on the fringe, I believe just knowing it is there for you – believing that there is a God – gives you something bigger to turn to when everything you can see, touch, feel, smell, and hear makes no sense to you. I can only wonder how including religion in Frank and April’s lives would have changed the outcome of the movie.