The Rs: A pair of Winslet films

[tramp]

During this recent awards season, Kate Winslet had one of those “double-headers” going: two award-magnet films, both titled with a “R.” We wondered which film she would be nominated for, if not both. I remember there was surprise that she finally got the leading nomination for The Reader – a role pushed through the Academy nominating process as “supporting.” Don’t you just love Academy marketing? Nobody bought it. It was a lead, she received the nomination for lead, and we all know how it turned out: she won an Academy Award for The Reader.

Now that I have sat down and watched both films – Revolutionary Road and The Reader – I think I know why The Reader won out. Of course, this is merely a theory of mine and I have no empirical evidence for my conclusion. I get the feeling the Academy was either feeling their usual self-importance and picked the Holocaust film or they were feeling a bit like I felt watching the suburbia is deadly movie known as Revolutionary Road. Sheer and utter pain.

Watching the Sam Mendes film, I was completely and utterly annoyed with Winslet’s character. I wanted her to die so she could be put of her miserable existence which in turn, would relieve me of the immense discomfort watching Winslet portray a self-indulgent, whiny, and unattractive housewife who deserved nothing but pity from us. If they were going for sympathy or empathy (did the book?), they got none from me. On the other hand, watching The Reader, I was also annoyed, only it wasn’t at Winslet as much as it was toward a story that was missing a key ingredient. That film left me curious as to what it could have been. But, at least, I was mesmerized by Winslet’s performance in a way that didn’t exist in the other film. In both films, she played strange women. Yet, in a film where I should have identified with her plight, I didn’t. In a film where I wouldn’t have identified in any way with her, I did.

Revolutionary Road, like American Beauty before it, explores the world of dreams and ambitions lost in the perfectly manicured lawns of suburbia. I find it fascinating how some writers believe that having a home in a neighborhood where all the homes look alike somehow destroys our individuality. That Saturday afternoon barbeques and dinners with the neighbors destroy us a little bit each time. How working a boring job is nothing more than slave labor; each tedious day after day, we lose more and more of our souls. Not that there isn’t some merit to this – life can be a bit dull. Childhood ambitions disappear. Numbness can set in. But in Winslet’s character, none of that rings true; instead I sympathized with DiCaprio’s character, a character who has surrendered to this suburban existence. A man trying to do the best he can. His wife is nothing more than a shrill, immature, self-possessed woman whose life seems to consist of nothing more than dreaming of some imaginary and glorious life in Paris. Get over it. In American Beauty, I sympathized with Kevin Spacey’s character; I understood him. I empathized. Here, I wanted to take out a gun and shoot the main character. She was obviously in pain and she needed to be put out.

If this was the author’s intention, I gather they succeeded. But I couldn’t help but wonder if it was supposed to be more: there was no real understanding of what it is to grow older and settle into what life becomes for most of us: survival and disappointment. Lives of “quiet desperation.” Her character single-handedly belittles the very real frustration and disappointment that we do go through. If anything, suburban life becomes something to defend: having a house is good! Having kids is good! (I’ve never seen a film about a husband and wife where we almost NEVER saw the kids. This was a huge mistake by the filmmakers.)

Was the message of this film to be grateful for suburbia? I wondered. While American Beauty seemed to hold that message in that last moment of Spacey’s life as he looked at the photograph of his family, this film seemed to get there by accident.

In The Reader, a story that uses illiteracy as a metaphor for a generation of Germans coming to terms with a Holocaust they helped to perpetuate, Winslet portrays a woman who had once been a Nazi guard. Her character seems “cold” as she engages with a young man, yet as the film progresses, it seems that she has more feeling inside her than the woman in Revolutionary Road. She is intensely wounded by her inability to read. She runs from it. She is unable to function. She is as helpless as the character in the other film, yet, here, you get the feeling it isn’t so much self-imposed. I didn’t actually understand her motivations or actions but I sympathized somehow. I shouldn’t have since I also felt repulsed by her at times. I believe the film truly falters by not communicating to us the damage she did to the young man. Why is he so cold? Because she ran off? That felt silly to me. But the real problem with this film was at it’s core: as Winslet’s character learns to read in jail, she comes to terms with her crimes. Literacy equals shame. That is never clearly communicated in this film. And that is a shame. Winslet’s wonderful and layered portrayal becomes mired in a film that wasn’t fully executed.

Still, I would have voted for her. In Revolutionary Road, she created a character so shallow and immature, her pain became something to laugh at; a caricature of humanity dealing with disappointment. Yet, in The Reader, where she played a character we would want to laugh at and disavow, she was able to create a complexity and pain that made her feel a great deal more human.

Revolutionary Road: 2
The Reader: 2.5

[christine]

Not seen The Reader, but Revolutionary Road veered between boredom and anger. I wanted to shake the woman! an intelligent woman losing her identity like that and just sitting there moaning. It's not like she had the routine of looking after her kids cos they were magically never there. I think I might've missed the whole point of the film cos surely even stuck as she felt in that suburban life couldn't she have gone and got a job?

[tramp]

"magically never there" -- christine, what a great way of putting it! I found that so damn distracting, I kept thinking, "where did they put the kids?"

Good point -- what a self-indulgent character she was -- a terrible actress and too self-absorbed to actually just go get some kind of a job. :rolleyes:

[Powdered Water]

Good reviews tramp. I mostly agree as you know already. The Reader was a mediocre flick at best and the academy should be ashamed of themselves for snubbing what truly was one of the best flicks from last year. Hell, even Doubt was twice the movie that The Reader was.

I'm still upset about it and I need to let it go so whatever...

I didn't love Revolutionary Road but I thought the performances were pretty good all around and was really tickled when what's his name (Micheal something I think) got his supporting nomination.

Clearly, I am a bad judge of "what's good" and that's fine I guess.

[tramp]

Yea, I knew you didn't like The Reader, but what film did you think was snubbed?

And you are certainly no "bad judge." You liked my reviews. ;)

[mark f]

The Dark Knight.

[tramp]

Ah, that's right. I remember now.

And he's right. :yup:

[christine]

I didn't love Revolutionary Road but I thought the performances were pretty good all around and was really tickled when what's his name (Micheal something I think) got his supporting nomination.


yeah I liked the acting, just not the characters. There were some beautifully framed scenes too.

[mark f]

I originally gave both films 3, but after rewatching both, I raised Revolutionary Road to 3.5. They do have some similarities, both being adaptations of novels and trying to get Oscar nominations.

I'm going to start with Revolutionary Road because it's fresher in my mind and it's much easier for me to relate to on a personal level. Richard Yates' novel was published in 1961, so it's not like this is some modern revisionist slant on what it was like to live in the 1950s. If anything, I find the material prescient in that people think of the '60s as the downturn of marriage and the upswing of divorce because of some kind of liberal overrun by society. However, this material makes it clear that marriages were certainly unhappy in the 1950s as well, and that it's not necessarily anybody's fault when marriages seem to consist of two people living two separate lives who show to the world and sometimes themselves that they have a shared life in their marriage and children. I realize that the film is filtered through a 21st century perspective, but the basic themes of the material were present in the 1961 novel. I find those themes to be that marriage is often a lonely experience and that you shouldn't give up on your dreams just because they're impractical.

My wife and I really wanted "to get away from it all". We wanted to find a cave somewhere or a remote log cabin in the forest somewhere because we weren't happy with our everyday life as drones working for the FAA. Of course, we couldn't really do it because we couldn't afford it, but even so, we both quit within a month of each other and went off on our own to find a better life. One thing which happened was that we did have a child. I'll admit that in the movie, the couple has been married for 10 years and has two children. We had been married for just over two years and had no kids and the prospects of having a happy family weren't too strong since we basically worked opposite hours from each other. As it turned out, we never found our little paradise away from it all, but we got our paradise of a child who's about to start at the USC Film School in August.

I still am about as far away from a drone as I could possibly be in my career, but I have enough bad habits to be considered on autopilot and that brings me to the other theme. Even happily-married people can sometimes be unable to fully express themselves about certain subjects for various reasons. Therefore, it can seem like they're living separate lives. I don't believe that I'm living a separate life from Brenda at all, and we've been married almost 22 years now. We each have plenty of shared interests and a few individual ones, and we find that healthy and normal. However, we have different ways of expressing ourselves which we've acquired through our upbringing and life experiences, and although we never fight over trivial things, we sometimes cannot help but feel that after this amount of time that the other one should know how we're going to try to "discuss" certain subjects and just get on with it. To this very day, there are certain subjects which are easier for one of us to talk about and the other one feels at a disadvantage and tends to clam up. I believe this is what happens repeatedly in Revolutionary Road. DiCaprio's character tends to want to openly discuss life and when she's emotionally vulnerable (say after a failure at the play or becoming pregnant again), Winslet's doesn't want to discuss it. After DiCaprio accepts Winslet's idea of going to Paris, he tends to not openly discuss it as much as she does, especially when it looks like he's getting a promotion and she gets pregnant. All this makes DiCaprio seem more like the person who has his feet planted firmly on the ground, but he's also the one who's cheating on his wife. Just because Winslet seems to be a dreamer and emotional doesn't mean that her dreams are any less valid than their everyday life.

Oh, and this brings up the idea of the kids. Yes, there are only a few scenes with the kids in them, but if you watch many '50s movies set in the '50s, you'll find that to be pretty normal for a heavy drama. The kids aren't in those movies either. Now, you can say that you hate the Winslet character because she cares more about her dreams than her kids, but this film isn't about what "everybody" should do or should feel because if it were, then there would be no reason to make it. If the Winslet character is disappointed with her life and her husband's disappointment with his career, and she's drifting toward depression, there probably is no reason to think that she's also not disappointed with her life as a stay-at-home housewife and mother which will only be perpetuated by her next pregnancy. She believes, whether it's immature and/or selfish, that a move to Paris will reenergize everything about her life and marriage. Remember, she wants to go to work, but she says that Paris is the place where she can make enough money to support the family; the idea was that DiCaprio would stay at home and work on his writing which is supposed to be his dream, unless he's now bought and sold at the marketplace and doesn't have the guts to give it a shot.

Anyway, I'm probably rambling, and I have to take a break before I get into The Reader, but I just want to say that I find the film painted in shades of gray and not so much black-and-white when it comes to why the characters do what they do. I think it tackles a complex subject which is certainly relevant today, and I thought that some of the dialogue exchanges were devastatingly honest, brutal and witty. I'll try to come back soon; I'm just wondering if you take that as a threat?

[tramp]

Mark, I remember now why I didn't answer this post right away. You gave me a lot to think about and I wondered if I could really respond without making it a tad personal. Because when I read your post, I thought of myself and my own marriage that failed. I compliment you on being married for so long. I also envy you. My husband and I did live separate lives. We did for such a long time that when we broke up, it wasn't (and still isn't) bitter. The only anger I feel is now when I see my stellar credit rating drop like a lead balloon because he failed to pay a particular credit card and his financial situation was destroyed by the real estate market. But that's another story....:mad:

You know, I should be able to relate to Winslet's character, but from the moment she talked to him outside the car in the first sequence of the film (after the failed play), I genuinely hated her. And if I'm honest with myself -- is it because I see myself in her?

Ever since I was young, I wanted to be a writer. Teachers and professors urged me to do so, but I never did it. The closest I got was the publication of a scholarly article in an English Journal. I love writing and when I do, I often feel it's not worthy or good. And it's interesting because DiCaprio and Winslet present two sides of this: one isn't really talented and the other is afraid to find out. I feel like I'm both: am I as talented as I was once told I was? Am I afraid to find out? If you dream of something and you find out you weren't as good as you thought you could be (DiCaprio), what do you have then? It would be like finding out you're nothing. Winslet's anger comes from the fact that the dream she once had is gone, and when she grabs onto DiCaprio's dream and he's too afraid, then she has nothing left.

I guess you're right -- there's a lot going on here. The problem I had was that she was just so whiny about it. So do I hate her because I can relate just a tad too much? I'm not sure. I think the film is flawed because while I can see these themes clearly, Winslet should be someone we can relate to. She should be someone who doesn't act so incredibly selfish. We should empathize.

Further -- and congrats on the kid going to Film School! -- as a mother myself, how could anyone treat their children like they don't matter? Like they give her nothing to live for? How incredibly selfish is that? I know we all have dreams and aspirations, but doesn't the love we feel for our children change us? It changed me. I could never walk away from my children to pursue a dream. She is simply not there for those children. The short scenes we see do not show us any love from her to them. Not enough anyway.

Like I had stated, I could relate to Lester Bernham in American Beauty a bit more. I understood his frustration and his numbness. Maybe it was Spacey's droll manner, or the screenplay, but there was something there that made me think about my middle-class existence in a way that made more sense to me. For example: Lester starts to get frisky with his wife and she stops him, worried about her couch. That's what I see so often -- people becoming so attached to their worldly goods and losing the hope they had in their youth. The story seemed more grounded in a reality of people just getting by. Most of us, let's face it, don't have any particular dreams or talents that sets us apart.

Yet, lol, this post does seem to indicate that I can relate a lot to Winslet's character since I do dream of something more. I still do... I've been outlining a novel I've had in my head for 10 years. So I guess I'm crazy like she was. :p

Great discussion, mark, you gave me much to think about. Maybe the book does explore these themes in a rich way; it seems the movie didn't succeed because Winslet's character is so shrill, she kills all empathy I would have had. And if I decide I am like her -- then what does that make me?

[Blue Lou]

I had to check out Revolutionary Road simply because of Mendes, DiCaprio, and Winslet. Pleasant suprise to find Kathy Bates in there too. For a while there it was like "Titantic moves to the suburbs". But seriously. Like tramp mentioned, it is another of those "suburbia=cookie cutter existence and aggressive individualism=excitement and fun" type scripts. It seems that Mendes favors this perspective of life. I thought American Beauty was great in bringing up this type of subject matter. In a way a lot of great films reflect the real/raw nature of our modern times. The evolution of westerns are a good example. In the early years the cowboy became hero and rode off into the sunset. Then Butch Cassidy came along, and now the cowboys are crooks that rob trains (think about that period...1969). And then Midnight Cowboy comes along and all the sudden the hero cowboy is a male prostitute. Im not sure of the reviews this book got when it was published in the early 60's, but I cant imagine it wasnt considered a little taboo. I think Revolutionary Road, like American Beauty, reflects Mendes's view that suburbia is not and never really was like "Leave It to Beaver".

The emotional tone of this movie, like each of you, took me by surprise. It is really raw and leaves you feeling uncomfortable. But I do tend to like that in movies. After all, if art is going to imitate life some of it is going to make your skin crawl. I dont think this tone would have come across correctly without the extraordinary performances by DiCaprio and Winslet. This movie and these characters represent the idea that relationships are difficult and sometimes, if not most of the time, the answers are hard to find.

Its not rare to see two people in a relationship where one is a realist-conservative type and the other is an artistic-dreamer. One set in the facts of life and the other focused on the possibilities. In a way this couple make a great team because of the way their contrasts compliment each other. You noticed at times how she had a way of picking him up and making him realize his potential. And he had his way of pulling her back from an acting career that was, from what the movie led us to believe, a serious long-shot. After all, a good romantic relationship should involve a certain teamwork with each of you steering the other to reach full potential. But its the pushing and pulling that can be hit and miss. So you have her wanting a romantic existence in Paris--the dreamer. And he sees the potential for stability --the promotion. The realist and the dreamer. And from an objective view, who is to say who is right? Given all the variables of any particular individual, what actions should a couple take to stay happy and productive? A great question that makes us think. And I believe thats why I liked this movie.

[Miss Vicky]

For a while there it was like "Titantic moves to the suburbs".

How so?

Except for the fact that both star Winslet and DiCaprio, I see absolutely no similarities between the two.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the majority of what you said in the rest of your post, but that? Not at all.

[r3port3r66]

Boy what a great thread! I haven't seen Revolutionary Road. I have seen The Reader. Seems that the latter is no where as interesting a topic as the Mendes film. I really felt The Reader, although intriguing was another sitdram about the holocaust. I mean how many times can a writer use the real horror of WW2 as a backdrop for a serious drama involving people with personal problems, making the audience choose between the main characters strife and the more important terror going on around them? However, The Reader did keep me captivated even though the major revelation of the movie was apparent from its title, and Michael, the male lead, as smart as he is, doesn't really get it until the last quarter of the film.

Having not seen revolutionary road (but getting its essence from the great discussion above), I really can't comment on it, but I was also in a relationship that failed, living in that island called the suburbs, watching my dreams slip away while supporting my partner's for the pursuit of money. And as most of you know I'm gay--and so was he! How's that for drama? But it is all relative! We were together 13 years until I caved to alcohol, stopped writing anything, and began working in the animal medical field. Revolutionary Road is now in my queue.

I understand the children are not a major part of the drama at least not on film. I strongly urge anyone that has interest in seeing the childrens side of things in a marriage about to collapse, see "Ordinary People" (1980). A powerhouse of a film that follows a young man coping with a tragedy, the distant mother who blames him, and a father trying to keep it all together.

[Blue Lou]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Blue Lou http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=554918#post554918)
For a while there it was like "Titantic moves to the suburbs".


How so?

Except for the fact that both star Winslet and DiCaprio, I see absolutely no similarities between the two.

It was a joke. Hence the "But seriously". But now that I remember, they did say they were going to take a boat to Paris. Still kidding.

Just thought it was interesting how three of the strongest actors in Titantic were also in this one. Not to mention the exact same romantic leads. Cant say enough about those two. They are two of my favorites.