Revolutionary Road

Adapted from Richard Yates’ autobiographical novel, Revolutionary Road drops the audience into the thick of a young couple’s failing marriage. Both Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) are approaching thirty and struggling to make peace with their unfulfilled dreams.  They have two young children, a house in the suburbs and a bevy of stifled friends who have already given themselves over to the disappointments of their lives.  Feeling trapped and sensing Frank’s own unhappiness with his work, April devises a plan to move to Paris, a place that promises the excitement of the unknown.  There is both joy and naivety to the plan – April believes they can break out of the rut they have fallen into, and in her desperation she fails to see that what Frank really wants, he already has.  It’s an engaging premise because like most dramas that question the value of the status quo, the material promises to reflect and magnify the lives of its audience.

 

The execution here however, seems both unwieldy and at the same time a little heavy handed.  The disintegration of Frank and April’s relationship and April’s utter frustration when her desire for a different life isn’t realized happens predictably, and while there is something of the inevitable about the events, (one could argue the film is more about the how than the what) the dialogue often becomes explanatory and the characters are more general than individual.  It’s true that people really do overtalk things as they struggle to communicate in the heat of an argument, but for me, the words took the affective experience out of the film, and I became aware of the construct. 

In John Cassavetes’ exploration of suburban marriage in A Woman Under the Influence, the mise-en-scene creates labyrinths out of the hallways and rooms the characters inhabit, enclosing them both physically and mentally.  The camera will zoom in close on a face, only to back out and turn, passing over a ceiling as the subject moves, re – enters the frame for a moment, then slips away again.  This way of filming is like a dance between character and camera, and the audience is physically involved – through the movement and disorientation the viewer has the sensation of getting under the character’s skin.  It’s this kind of affective experience that is missing from Revolutionary Road.  Here, Mendes’ shoots in a static way, with lots of medium close ups, square framing and fixed cameras.  The stillness of the frame made the film feel like a play, and as a result the emotion feels a little contrived.  As April begins to break down, screaming at Frank ‘Get away from me, don’t you touch me,’ I longed for Gena Rowlands.  No one does a breakdown quite like Cassavetes.

 

It’s the idea of masculinity, and the trouble Frank has trying to feel comfortable in a society that both valorized and stifled its men that I found most interesting here, and I wanted to see more of it.  Early in the film there is a quote-worthy moment when April tells Frank, ‘You’re the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the world, a man.’ In April’s eyes Frank’s maleness means he can take the world in his hands and throw convention to the winds in a way that she as a woman can’t do on her own.  But in the claustrophobic world of middle class America in the 1950’s, the pressures on Frank to fit a certain mould are just as strong.  Even while there is scope for Frank to go out into the city, have affairs with secretaries and complain about work over lunch with his friends, he comes up against brutal disapproval when he toys with the idea of actually leaving.  In Revolutionary Road Frank finds himself a place within the big machine, stumbling across a field he finds interesting.  But I wonder if this is the contentment of acceptance or merely the resignation of being unwilling to fight.

Frost/Nixon

Cinematographically, Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon isn’t much to shout about, but as the film began life as a play and is heavy on the dialogue, the straightforward shooting style works. The film details the interviews Nixon gave with the English talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen), three years after he resigned from office.  Both men are rather unlikeable characters, but Howard’s handling of the images allows both to show their good and bad sides.  The unobtrusive camera work is non judgemental and gives the audience room to create their own affective relationships with the characters.

I enjoyed the film, but at times I felt somewhat manipulated by the richly layered performance Frank Langella gives as Nixon.  His performance is riveting – I found it impossible to tear my eyes away from him whenever he was onscreen, and I cared about him more than I wanted to.  But perhaps this is the point.  The discomfort I felt is the same discomfort I feel when faced with the knowledge that someone I dislike has similar feelings to me.  No one wants to sympathise with someone they dislike politically, but this film concentrates on building a portrait of a man, rather than a president.  The state of the country after his time in office is alluded to, Nixon is of course a disgraced president whose arrogance brought about his own downfall, but essentially, this is a story about two men and their personal desires, rather than a political film.

Langella’s sensitive portrayal of Nixon piqued my curiosity to see the real Nixon onscreen, and so I youtubed him. On youtube, one encounters a far more composed and polished Nixon than appears in the film. Nixon giving his resignation speech is a hard man, impenetratable, cold, and well rehearsed.  Langella has a far more likeable face than the real Nixon, his eyes are warmer, his mouth less sharp. Langella as Nixon has a humanity about him even as he toys with the unprepared Frost in the early interviews and smiles smugly as he emerges triumphant. The interpretation of real events that fictionalised history facilitates has all sorts of problems, and yet in order for the film to work, Nixon must be sympathetic.  Fiction is concentrated drama after all, and characters who in reality may have no redeeming features can be presented with a myriad of doubts.  This Howard does well.  He portrays Frost and Nixon as having similar reasons for pursuing the interviews, both wish to bring their careers back from the brink, both are arrogant and unconventional men, both long to be celebrated by their peers.  This runs as a clear idea through the film, and is made obvious when Nixon drunkenly calls the panicked Frost prior to their final interview.  I have no idea if this really happened, but it acts as a catalyst here, pushing Frost to do his research and become a formidable opponent.  Whether Nixon would have wanted Frost to be as up to the challenge as the film suggests is questionable, but it’s a tried and true idea, that of the master boxer desperately wishing for a worthy sparring partner.  In the end, Frost/Nixon is less a film about the interviews, or about political history, and more a film about the human desire for power and prestige, and the impossibility of holding onto it forever.

When Harry Met Sally

I arranged for the baker of heart shaped cheesecakes to lose her When Harry Met Sally virginity on Christmas eve, and as we watched, she stitched her heart into a patchwork dinosaur for the boy.  For some reason or other I always think of this film at Christmas, even though all the salient plot points happen at New Year.  This New Year I had even planned to say, ‘Because I hate you Harry, I really hate you,’ to anyone in earshot just as the fireworks burst into the sky, but after bathing in champagne and running toward the train tracks and jumping madly on the hind end of a semi-trailer and screaming out to the luckless people still in the train as the new year rolled in, I forgot all about it.  Sarinah quoteless?  Yes, it must have been a special moment.

Although the fake orgasm in the diner is arguably the most famous scene in When Harry Met Sally, my favourite moment in this film is when Jess (Bruno Kirby) and Marie (Carrie Fisher) fight over the fate of the hideous wagon wheel coffee table.  It’s not a terribly romantic scene, and it’s not the funniest moment in the movie.  I love it because somehow Princess Leia has married a paunchy, hairy, mustachioed, irritatingly bourgeois-intellectual shorts and socks wearing goblin – and she loves him.  Loves him.  Loves him more passionately and more truthfully than any long limbed, doe eyed starlet could love a Brad Pitt or a Matt Damon, and definitely more than Clare Danes could love Leo.  This imperfect, unflattering, horrendously dressed union is one of the most down to earth celluloid love affairs I have seen.

This imperfect love is one of the things that makes When Harry Met Sally different from most romantic comedies.  Alice (Lisa Jane Persky) is also in love with a man who is far from conventionally attractive, but in his few seconds of screen time, he whisks her onto the dance floor with a zest that would make any pornstar blush.  These men are the kind of men that you and I might meet, might love.  You could share a life with them without getting bored, and although no doubt they would at times be embarrassing, frustrating, and intolerable, it is unlikely they would hog the bathroom mirror, or spend more time drying their hair than you.  Even though romance fiction keeps suggesting that it would be wonderful to be cared for/rescued/adored by a devastatingly beautiful boy, I know I’d be screaming to get out of the castle in just a few short weeks.  And as much as I thrive on the drama of unrequited and doomed flickering light love, in real life I want a partner who makes mistakes, who doesn’t know everything, who is fleshy and whole and needs my support as much as I need theirs.  When Harry Met Sally tells it like that, and I am glad to hear it.