Saturday, March 7, 2009

Revolutionary Road


Are tied down to your job because of your wife, kids, mortgage payments and other financial commitments? Do you feel your ambitions and dreams in life have all been thwarted? Do you feel you have made wrong choices in life and stuck in a quagmire? To add to this complexity you also have a loveless marriage, and a wife who connects and abruptly disconnects like a dialup modem. Isn’t this a perfect entrapment? Who is responsible for all this? Be it America, India or wherever on this earth this is a predicament we are all faced with today. Humans are complex multi cellular species driven by dreams, desire and delusions.

Now what can you do about your life, responsibilities and unrealized dream? Should you be a part of the audience and see life pass by without exercising your free will? Or should you break the shackles and start live your dream and be in complete control of your life?

The movie opens with Kate and Leo exploring the boundaries of friendships at a party. But very soon their exploration puts them together on the journey of life. They embark the journey with the hope they will support each other to realize their dreams.

Is marriage the right choice to realize your dream? Didn’t seem like the best decision in this case. Dreams were shelved and they went around the neighborhood looking for a house and then topped it up kids. The Wheeler’s end up living a mundane, stereotypical urban husband and wife with lackadaisical life. Soon their marriage turns into a battle ground. They end up constantly bickering over their unrealized dreams, and with two kids they were carrying a mountain of responsibilities on their shoulders and wearing a tired, sulking, emotionally drained look on their face. Professionally and personally it was unfulfilling for Leo. This is when you realize marriage is not an answer for fulfilling dreams in life. May be there is answer outside the marriage to realize your dream? Finally it was smoke from the marriage, smoke from infidelity and from the cigarettes that engulfs the screen.

Who will fix the marriage and who will get to live their dream? Kate, the mature mother of two decides by moving to Paris Leo can live his dream, while she dons the role of the breadwinner. Sounds so romantic but is it realistic? This is when the westerly wind drifts the boat away. You leave the movie hall in a pensive thoughtful mood…Is life fair? Is it fate or free-will that win?

Predicaments of life have never been captured so vividly ever on the screen. Kate and Leo, Hollywood’s romantic couple has come a long way from yuppie Titanic stars to responsible adults caught in their mid-life whirlwind. They have done a brilliant job showing hue of emotions on the screen from disillusionment, hatred, infidelity to love all on one canvas. Dialogues and screen play is sharp and poignant (Kate is brilliant when she says “To make the first mistake look right we had the second baby”. Music is exceptionally, especially the violin in the shot where Leo runs away (we don’t if he is running away from or towards something) is just marvelous and strings every nerve in your body. It is a revolutionary road in every sense. Dreams come with a price - both live and unlived.

1 comment:

  1. Very well written chandra, I dont know if the movie maker has thought so much of possibilities in life as in ur review. Free will or FATE. Dreams are unfulfilled desires and nothing can fill it until it happens and even if it happens, the desires only gets multiplied. Why to limit ourselves with a list of likes and dislikes? May be thats what we call free will and whatever happens is not on our desires is what we call FATE. Experiencing everything as it comes and feeling like a balloon which is very light is what we must become.
    Regards,
    Anita

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