Having just seen the widely praised "Revolutionary Road", I am still trying to work out all the reasons why I detest it so much. Some of them are the same reasons why I hated "American Beauty", by the same director, so much.
Does no fashionable Hollywood director or writer have a kind word to say about traditional marriage? But on top of this there is a deafening silence on the part of the critics. Only one reviewer, on the US Catholic Bishop's website, mentions the abortion which kills Kate Winslett's character. This is like writing a history of WW2 without mentioning Herr Hitler.
I am not sure if the film condones her choice - much of the script displays a preposterously trivial and adolescent attitude to serious moral questions, with the tiresome characters' yearnings for some undefined meaningful life being the most important factor in human existence. You might say that the young mother's demise is an implicit plea for safe abortion on demand, rather than a bodged Do-It-Yourself procedure at home. But I doubt that the author is even that consistent and serious.
On a more trivial note, it is plain that the producers were oblivious to the impact on audiences anywhere outside North America. The young couple's lovely house would be beyond the dreams of any young couple on Europe today - never mind in the 1950s. Was it really possible for a young single-wage family to live in such style in the New York commuter area in 1955? The house used in the film is like those on the upmarket Caversham Heights area of Reading - and in upmarket areas around other British and European towns and cities. The difference is that the British and mainland European houses would have less land than the "Revolutionary Road" home and could be afforded only by middle-aged professionals. I suspect that most audiences elsewhere on the planet will laugh at the attempt to evoke sympathy for two dumb Yanks who don't know how lucky they are......and evidently know even less about the cost of living in Paris.
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