For all the talk there's been about the reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the truly significant return, I feel, is that of Sam Mendes to the suburbs. In 1999, Mendes exploded on the scene with his feature film debut, American Beauty. When it first came out, American Beauty, was considered an original and scathing condemnation of suburban America. To me, though, American Beauty, was always more about the failure of the boomers to live up to their ideals.
Ten years later, Mendes goes back to the suburbs but this time, the story takes place in the 1950s: the very era in which the boomers are born. Looking at Revolutionary Road as a sort of prequel to American Beauty, we can see in these two films a history of failure. In each case, it's not so much the suburbs in and of themselves that are the real "monsters" but the decisions that we make in order to live in the suburbs. Simply put, Mendes sees the American suburb as the space of compromise, a place of comfort and ease but one that comes at a cost.
Now, I'm not about to get into whether or not this is true. Sticking with Mendes' skills as a director, I'll simply say that Mendes paints a very power picture. While American Beauty was about a couple who had essentially sold their souls over a slow period of time, allowing themselves to become numb, Revolutionary Road is a couple who sense this numbing happening to them and are frantically trying to get out. The problem I have with both these films -- as well as most anti-suburb films in general -- is that they rarely show the other side. Would it really have been much better to stay in the city? Would their lives have significantly better?
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