Alaska Employment Law

Having read Richard Yates’s book, I went to see the film Revolutionary Road on Saturday.  I have discussed the plot before, in my earlier review.

Like nearly all film adaptations of a good novel, the movie lacks some of the depth of the book.  Important scenes in the book, like those depicting the sorry relationship between April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) and her parents, especially her father, are not touched upon at all.  A recurrent motif in the book has Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to install a stone walkway in this front yard, a Sisyphean task he can’t stand but somehow feels obliged to do.  In the novel, the little secretary whom Frank beds and abandons is much more affected by those events than the film reveals.  And the couple’s children are virtually absent in the movie.  At least in the book it is clear when and why they are sent off to play with the neighbors’ kids.

Winslet is the far superior actor in this film.  DiCaprio as Frank Wheeler is supposed to be 30 years old, but he seems too young sometimes for his complex but miserable wife.  Winslet reveals a theme that is less clear in the book - that April is desperate to leave her suburban life but cannot admit that it is her desperation that informs her actions.  Incidentally, Michael Shannon has been nominated for best supporting actor for his part as John Givings, the son of the Wheelers’ busybody real estate agent.  Mr. Givings has been confined to a psychiatric hospital until we meet him in the film.  Like a Greek chorus, what he says to the Wheelers is true, and eventually devastating.  Shannon is astonishingly good in this role.  The film and the book end on the same scene, where we see how old man Givings, John’s father, deals with his own dreadful suburban life.

Worth seeing.  If I could only do one, I would read the book and skip the film.