Movie Review: Revolutionary Road

Content warning: discussions of abortion

For the first time in 2016, I watched Titanic. Up until then, I would listen to a table full of high schoolers talk about the movie, and I would casually say, “I haven’t seen Titanic.” They would gawk at me, incredulous, and exclaim, “What?!? You’ve never seen Titanic?” I might as well have been hiding under a rock. My parents had a VHS set of Titanic (I guess there were two VHS cassettes because the movie is about three hours long) but when it came out in 1997, I was only four years old and, well, Titanic is PG-13 for a reason. If I watched Titanic with my parents, I would have bugged them throughout the movie, asking them questions like, “Mommy, why did that red-haired lady take off her clothes? And why is that man scribbling on a piece of paper and staring at her?” It would not have been a great viewing experience for my parents. Also, as someone who cries at even the smallest thing (I am an empath at heart), when I would go to the ice-skating rink for lessons, and that darn “My Heart Will Go On” song came on, I would start tearing up and crying because the music and Celine Dion’s voice was so moving. One of the ice-skating teachers observed me and told my parents, “This little girl is going to be a humanitarian someday.”

Fast forward to the fall of 2016, and I am up at 1:00 am, ugly-crying Viola Davis style as the end credits rolled on my laptop and Celine Dion’s voice sang “Near/ far/ wherever you are…” I was not only sad at the end. I was SHOOKETH. I had to home visit a friend in my Buddhist community the next day, which is why, looking back, I would not ever watch a movie like Titanic before going to bed because I know that it is going to keep me up. At night, all I could do was toss and turn and agonize over that one question that was apparently on a lot of people’s minds: Was there or wasn’t there enough room on that door for Jack? And why did Rose have to have the damn door all to herself? I know, I know, you’re rolling your eyes and saying, Geez, it’s just a movie. Get over yourself. Also, James Cameron is the director of the movie, so no matter what those guys on MythBusters did to prove that there was enough room on that floating door for Jack, James Cameron said that Jack sacrificed his life and was being a gentleman by letting Rose float on that door and sinking to his death. What was comforting, though, was that after I had watched the movie and told two of my friends from college how angry and upset that I was about that ending, they empathized with me and agreed that Rose shouldn’t have hogged that door. Of course, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio were just doing their jobs as actors. Also, it’s a drama: it’s supposed to be sad, and in real life, many people on The Titanic did not survive when the ship hit the iceberg and sank. I think going to that person’s house and chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with her and my mom brought me some much-needed comfort, because literally that ending of Titanic gave me serious nightmares. I was that upset. Over a movie. After I watched it, I became a little bit obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio and started reading interviews and articles about him and his life growing up. I admit, I was decades late to the screaming-girls fan club of Leonardo DiCaprio. It was a very late parasocial relationship where I read interviews he did in his teens and 20s (I also was a little obsessed with his work as an environmentalist at one point.) But it was fun to fangirl over him, nonetheless. I later on saw him in The Wolf of Wall Street, and it was a totally different role than the sweet fun character of Jack in Titanic. Jordan Belfort was not a nice guy. He was misogynistic, greedy and a very miserable mean man. He started off being kind, but he got influenced by the dog-eat-dog mentality of Wall Street and soon was cussing at his employees and snorting cocaine out of a… okay, that part I probably don’t want to talk about, because to this day I can’t get that image out of my head. All you have to know is that it was gross. All I could think was, how did he and Jonah Hill’s character, Donny, survive even after all of the Quaaludes and other hard drugs they did?

But honestly, even though The Wolf of Wall Street was pretty tough for me to sit through, especially as a young woman watching Jordan cheat on his wife with multiple women in the movie, I really admire Leonardo’s acting and how versatile he is. Which brings me to the 2008 romantic drama called Revolutionary Road. Like Titanic, it also stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and like Titanic, it was emotionally intense. I didn’t cry but I was pretty depressed after watching Revolutionary Road. What kept me watching the movie, though, was the incredible acting of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The film takes place in the 1950s, and Frank and April Wheeler meet at a party at the beginning of the movie. They don’t see themselves as conventional people, but they end up doing what a lot of (white) straight people in America did what was expected of them at that time: get married, move to a white-picket-fence suburb in Connecticut and have children (I use “white” in parentheses because no way my Black ass was going to be allowed near a white picket fence in the 1950s.) Frank brings home the bacon at his 9-5 office job, and April, an aspiring actress, stays at home and takes care of the kids while continuing to audition for roles. They are friends with a couple named Howard (Richard Easton) and Helen Givings (Kathy Bates), who have a son named John (Michael Shannon), who has a bleak outlook on life. Frank and April are also friends with a couple named Milly (Kathryn Hahn) and Shep Campbell. (David Harbour) Even though they are living this comfortable life, they are deeply miserable. Frank is miserable at his full-time office job and April isn’t succeeding in her acting career. To escape from the boredom of his suburban man-of-the-house life, Frank sleeps with a secretary at his job, Maureen Grube (Zoe Kazan). April, meanwhile, proposes to Frank that they should move to Paris. Not only that, but she says she will work a job to support them both, completely defying the long-cemented traditional gender norms that dictate that the man brings home the paycheck while the woman stays home and cleans. April thinks that she is going to help Frank escape his boring office job, and that she will also get something out of it because she will become the actress she aspires to be with more opportunities in Europe. They tell their friends they are really excited, but their neighbors are uncomfortable with Frank and April just impulsively deciding they will leave their comfortable life in the U.S. to go to Europe permanently. The only one who seems to understand why Frank and April would leave their miserable lives in suburbia is Helen and Howard Givings’ son, John. He, too, is miserable in the suburbs because he doesn’t fit in and his parents are always thinking he needs to be fixed because he has a mental illness, so he loves that Frank and April, like him, want to leave this miserable empty seemingly perfect white-picket-fence life.

However, shit hits the fan and their plans to move to Europe flunk when Frank gets a promotion at work and April finds out she is pregnant again. Frank tries to talk her out of the plan to go to Paris, but April is devastated that her dreams to escape this boring conventional life have been crushed by reality, and she thinks about getting an abortion, but this is the 1950s and there was a huge taboo against getting an abortion. Also, since there were probably no abortion clinics back in that day, women had to use dangerous methods to carry out abortions. I think that is why this movie was so devastating to watch, because Frank goes off to work without him and April blowing up at each over, but then when he is gone, she carries out the abortion by herself and ends up bleeding to death. Even though I didn’t cry, seeing Frank Wheeler grieve and run out of the hospital after finding out his wife died of bleeding from the abortion was hard to watch.

Even though I was born and raised in the suburbs, I don’t know if I would want to live in a suburb in the 1950s. Of course, I wouldn’t have been allowed to anyway, because I am Black and at the time, white flight was happening and white people were moving from cities to suburbs, so there wouldn’t have been any room for me. And I would have probably had white racist neighbors throw eggs at my house and call me the N-word multiple times if I lived in the suburbs at that time. I do kind of resonate with Frank and April’s desire to get out of the suburbs, though, because even though I wouldn’t be allowed to live in a suburb back in the 1950s due to being Black, I grew up in a suburb in the 1990s and 2000s, a time when it was okay for kids like me to go to schools in the suburbs and play in the park with kids of all different races and ethnicities. I really loved growing up in the place I did, but around 16 of 17, I grew jaded of the suburbs and wanted to go to the east coast for college, and I did. I was so ready to get out of Texas and leave for the East Coast, especially growing up as someone who has always loved supporting LGBTQ rights as an ally and went to school where there was a lot of homophobia and transphobia. However, even when I went off to the East Coast for college and went to a place that was LGBTQ friendly, I still dealt with loneliness, depression, anxiety and homesickness during my time in college because I was away from my family for so long. When I moved back to Texas after graduating, I was burned out and took on some part-time jobs, and I was happy at first, but then I started having big dreams of playing at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and I thought that to make it big as a musician I had to move to a city like Los Angeles or New York since there seemed to be more opportunities to get in the music industry. However, as much as I wanted to move to Los Angeles or New York City, I think staying put here in my little suburb outside of Dallas has been ultimately the best decision for now, not only because living in those cities would be too expensive, but because looking back, even though I was bummed about not moving to New York in my 20s, I needed to stay where I was because my mental health was so fucked up and I didn’t know how to take care of myself. Even though I still want to move to New York City someday, staying here in my (not-so-little) Texas suburb has given me the time to think about what I really want to do in life and has given me the time to learn how to take care of my mental and physical health, and also learn how to be a more mature, responsible adult. I threw tantrums about not being able to move to New York, and impulsively applied for an apartment in Harlem without telling my parents, but honestly I needed to get grounded and grow up, because looking back I wasn’t in a good enough financial situation to move to the city. I also wasn’t very emotionally mature back then even though I thought I was mature. I am still saving up money to move, but I know understand after a lot of chanting and self-reflection and talking with friends and family that it takes a lot of preparation to move somewhere else: emotional, financial, etc. I know there are stories of people who just pick up everything, quit their jobs and move to New York City with less than $300 in their savings, but I had to learn over time that everyone has their own unique situation and that picking up everything, quitting my 9-5 and moving to New York was just not realistic for my personal situation. I think chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and studying about Buddhism has kept me grounded so that even if I don’t like everything about Plano, I can still find time to appreciate the little things about it, like the fact that I live near so many grocery stores within a 5 mile radius or that I don’t have to drive far to go to my job everyday.

Honestly, I am glad I read books about relationships before watching Revolutionary Road. I had a sort of dreamy idea about marriage before watching this movie but watching this reminded me that getting married to someone doesn’t always mean one will be happy. I have learned that there are a lot of people in unhappy marriages. I read this book called It’s Not Me, It’s You by Vanessa Bennett and John Kim, two therapists who are married and have a kid together. Reading this book, I learned that relationships take a lot of work and maturity, and you have to also work on yourself, too, whether you are in a committed relationship or not. Also, there are a lot of people who are Frank and April’s age nowadays who leave the United States of America and move to Europe or other places overseas for various reasons: better economic opportunities, grad school, better quality of life, or to escape the current madness of the Trump administration. I remember feeling heartbroken that this guy I had a crush on was moving to Europe with his fiancée for a year, but looking back I am glad it worked out the way it did because I realized that I wasn’t actually as in love with this person as I thought I was. He is a great friend, but I am happy he is in a relationship with someone else because after a lot of self-reflection, I realized that I love my independence and don’t want to feel like I have to rush into a relationship. Also, I only really liked that guy because he thought I was attractive when we were in school together, which is a really shallow reason to like someone. I am also asexual, so I didn’t feel any sexual attraction to him or anyone else at the time we met. Also, if I was with this person, I don’t think I would have wanted to move abroad. I like traveling, but again, I love my independence, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to be free and do my own thing if I went to Europe because my partner got a fellowship there. Then again, I probably have no idea what I am talking about because I have never been in a serious committed relationship with someone, so I don’t know whether or not I would have been happy with this guy had he ended up with me and not someone else. The last time I dated a guy was several years ago, and it lasted for about a week before I had to move back to the U.S. and the other person had to move back to Australia. We had to break it off at some point after a couple of years of long-distance talking back and forth on Facebook Messenger, and I think it was the best thing for us at the time because I didn’t have the emotional maturity to be in a serious relationship with someone. What Frank and April did would have been considered totally normal now because a lot of Millennials move to other places, and now that a lot of people work remotely, they can move anywhere for their work. Also, a lot of people have to move to different cities for their jobs, so they have to uproot their lives and start over.

The abortion scene in Revolutionary Road made me think of some other movies I have seen where abortion is a hot topic of debate. There is a movie I saw a while ago called Waves, and it’s about this Black teenager named Tyler, who is part of the wrestling team at his school and has a challenging relationship with his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), who sets unrealistic expectations for him and constantly reminds him that as Black people living in a white affluent area, they don’t have the luxury of failing or being average in what they do, so Tyler has to work ten times as harder as anyone else simply because he is a Black man in a society that doesn’t expect him to do anything exceptional. Ronald didn’t grow up with the opportunities that his kids have, so he thinks Tyler is wasting his life away by not constantly excelling and achieving. Ronald pushes Tyler to the brink of exhaustion and constantly berates him, and even though Tyler’s mom isn’t hard on her son and gives him encouragement, Ronald thinks that encouraging Tyler will make him weak and less of a man, so he criticizes him all the time. Tyler is dating a girl named Alexis and they are enjoying their relationship, but after they have unprotected sex, Alexis tells Tyler that she is pregnant. They go to an abortion clinic where lots of middle- aged white women are standing outside of the clinic holding pro-life signs and protesting abortion, and when they leave, one of the women calls Tyler the N-word and he threatens to fight her. He angrily drives his girlfriend back home, and loses it when Alexis tells him that she is scared of getting the abortion and wants them to keep the baby. Tyler, however, doesn’t want her to keep the baby and he keeps shouting and cussing at her about why she decided at the last minute to not get the abortion. She angrily yells “Fuck you” at him and decides to get out of his car and walk home. He texts her to try and apologize and make up, but she no longer wants to be with him because he doesn’t respect her decision to keep the baby, and after he sends her a flurry of angry text messages demanding that she give him an explanation why she doesn’t want to see him anymore, she breaks up with him over text. His self-worth damaged, Tyler spirals into a rage and destroys everything in his room, with his mom worriedly knocking on the door, asking if he is ok and to answer the door. Tyler’s anger and jealousy drives him to go to prom and confront his girlfriend about her decision to not only keep the baby but go to prom with another guy. He hits her and ends up knocking her to the ground, and she bleeds to death. This scene was heartbreaking, but it showed me that when young men are not encouraged to express their emotions in a healthy way or told that expressing emotions and vulnerability is weak, it can motivate them to express their anger in a destructive way that harms not just themselves, but their friends and family, too.