Of course, the other parent of the bastard child that is Revolutionary Road is Sam Mendes and, more specifically, the feted American Beauty, a film so bad that the turning point of its plot hung on a visual gag of misunderstanding so unsubtle that the Marx Brothers would have rejected it. To be clear, Revolutionary Road is not a proper film. American Beauty is more of a film than Revolutionary Road. As is Airplane or Ace Ventura: Pet Detective or Ghostbusters. Those are films that, at least, understand and embrace the qualities of their medium. Revolutionary Road, on the other hand, shies away from cinema, preferring to be a nice, stolid literary adaptation of a book that soon half the population of the London Underground will be reading. It is crammed full of images that will be no shock to anyone who has ever seen a painting by Edward Hopper (to whom just as much debt is owed as Richard Yates) and lines of such clunking obviousness that many of the actors, Michael Shannon in particular, seem to be fighting against the script. Yes, it has good performances; Leo's is better than Kate's, because he isn't so obviously acting. When he moves, shark-like around the backstage of his wife's play, he is totally enrapturing. Except for the fact that he looks about twelve, and so was probably the worst casting decision the filmmakers could have made, apart from, perhaps, Robin Williams. This is a problem particularly pertinent when he's crying, because all of a sudden he looks like a teenager whose parents have banned his Xbox.
The themes, such as they are, are solid too, but again, won't be a shock to anyone who hasn't seen Blue Velvet, or, indeed, Short Cuts, a film in which marital strife is laid bare in a much more affecting way than Revolutionary Road. Ultimately, like the sex scenes, Revolutionary Road goes nowhere. Perhaps Yates should have called it Revolutionary Cul De Sac. But then, he probably had a better sense of irony than Sam Mendes. Before it has even properly begun, it is clear that it won't end well for Leo or Kate and after half an hour it is clearer still that what would be more affecting is a snapshot of a marriage going clearly down the toilet - like you might get in one of Robert Altman's vignettes from Short Cuts, or in an Edward Hopper painting - rather than a two hour film. As it is, the marriage is so dependable in its volatility, and shows so little passion (that emotion for which cinema is so well suited) to contrast with the pain that it degenerates into a wait for the next fight, a glance at one's watch or one's shoes, a fumble to the bottom of the pick n' mix packet, a desire to do anything other than watch a film that runs so determinedly into the brick wall of stolidity.