Charlie Rose

REMant  01/07/2009 04:52 PM Report

Having now seen the picture, or rather as much of it as I could take, I've changed my opinion about this interview. I had enjoyed the comments, some of which echoed my own feelings about acting and actors. As Winslett said actors are pathetic precisely because their lives are always someone else's and not their own. DiCaprio was certainly right that this kind of movie could not be made this way now despite reality TV, etc. However, my sense of this particular film, is precisely the opposite: that it is entirely about actors and actresses, and, that it is pretty much what is made now. Part of the teason for this must be laid on the author.

Here's what Yates said about his novel in a 1972 interview: "I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the nineteen-fifties. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs - a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witch-hunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that - felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit - and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties....I remember when I was first working on it and feeling my way into it, somebody at a party asked me what I was writing a novel about, and I said I thought I was writing a novel about abortion. And the guy said what do you mean by that? And I said, it's going to be built on a series of abortions, of all kinds - an aborted play, several aborted careers, any number of aborted ambitions and aborted plans and aborted dreams - all leading up to a real, physical abortion, and a death at the end. And maybe that's about as close to a real summation of the book as I've ever come."

This is, of course, one of the themes of the Fortune articles by William H. Whyte, at the time, later published as The Organization Man, and Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Tocqueville had examined it thoroughly a century before that. Psychiatrists immediately leapt to the conclusion that it was all neurotic and paranoid, and further reason for the freer social system with fewer repressed emotions they had been selling for a long time. Then there were the Beatniks and James Dean and David Riesman and Richard Hofstadter. That the theme was so well traveled is probably the reason for lack of interest except among writers interested in Yates' craft. It is an explanation for why he found life dull, but is not an accurate reflection on the average people of the time, nor of the communities they created. The assumption is that the NY artistic community is representative of revolutionary life, and that fear of life and desire for security is the reason for allowing oneself to be railroaded into conformity. It is essentially a commentary on Puritanism as it was and probably still is commonly understood.

The problem of 50's suburban life was the automation as it were of society, as represented perhaps in the various sorts of Levittowns that were built, which aside from the neighbors meant little of the variety of either the old-fashioned town or city was to be had. I spent my high school years in one of these suburbs and I know it first-hand. In a word, it was desolate. I went from there to an old established small-town college and was envious of the experience of most of my fellow students. Despite being immensely more populous and hardly suburban anymore, that place is scarcely better, perhaps worse, because it now lacks the society that was present, the other side of Whyte's coin, which has been left out here. It certainly had nothing to do with anti-Communism, except that certainly all those crew-cutted young men who marched off the Vietnam just a few years later all believed in American exceptionalism, just as those who went to Iraq. This was well brought out in the best Vietnam-era film, Jane Fonda's Coming Home. But the shortcomings of current suburban life were well-treated in Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone, which in large measure bemoans the loss of exactly what Whyte criticized. The irony, it seems to me, that needs to be brought out, is that this generation wanted to keep the comradery they had found in growing up in the Depression and experienced during the war, which instead turned into a commercial corporatism, a progression not unlike that experienced by the post WWI generation in Germany, and this very thing is what has happened to this film.

But no Beatnik-type would have ever moved to the suburbs, and they were in no way typical of that generation, and certainly not of the Revolutionary generation, so at the very least, the novel and film are not generalizable. In fact, it would have been quite unusual in any locale, at any time prior, perhaps, to our own, for ppl to want to be actors, actresses or novelists. It wasn't done. Parents would have counseled against it, and for good reason.

The film also misses entirely the tidy morality of the period, except for the line of new galvanized trash cans. Instead the characters look like something out of a contemporary attempt at film noir, or a gangster film like The Godfather. And the sets do as well, being a mish-mash of stuff that I could only describe as looking like a 60's student apt. The suburb, itself, was clearly built in the 40s, if not earlier, and both the fridge and the range are too old. The family would not have been able to afford a new Buick, either. This could just be a matter of inexperience, but I'd suppose it is also evidence of the desire to show the past as more primitive than the present, which ironically looks back past that time to a lost world, trying to be recovered, i.e., what is often referred to as Whig history, or the paradox of Progressivism. The British as much as accused the actual revolutionaries of the same thing, and often still do today.

Winslett and DiCaprio are problematic in any case. A lot of actors are always themselves no matter what part they play, and to not look out of place, they have to remain "typecast." This irritates some of them, but it doesn't seem to have an adverse effect on careers or industry - quite the opposite. Others, like spies, are more non-descript and can be made to fit many roles, but draw less attention and make less money. This happens in all the other arts. One thinks of a Coltrane, or a van Gogh. If the film were intent on putting these two in this unlikely scenario, then it would have been better to leave them as they are, but if it was to make a statement about 50's society, then some actors would have been preferable.

viviennez  01/03/2009 08:32 AM Report

it's "wild as the wind" by nina simone

viviennez  01/02/2009 01:05 PM Report

it's "Wild is the Wind" ny Nina Simone...Cat Power also does a beautiful cover of the song. Both are available on itunes.

FLTom  12/31/2008 02:06 PM Report

What the suits said to Leo and Kate before they embarked on the publicity tour for Revolutionary Road:

"Shhhh....whatever you do, don't mention the central role a botched abortion plays in the film!"

The "A" word must never be mentioned. It's long been the kiss of box office death, and that tradition will continue for this film once word of mouth spreads and people learn what the film is really about.

Mendes chose dishonest subject matter about the middle class for American Beauty, and he's chosen a dishonest work about the middle class and abortion here. He's only happy when he's lying about his "inferiors," a common condition among the cultural elite, and a very real indication of the decline of western culture.

Sandra  12/31/2008 01:32 PM Report

I found the trailer music absolutely haunting, but can't find it. I've checked the Soundtrack from Revolutionary Road and previewed every song, but just can't find out where to get THAT SONG. "love me love me love me love me say you will". My husband thinks it's Nina Simone, but I have a doubt. Do you know what the trailer score song is/who sings it? Please and thank you. Enjoyed the show, will see the movie.