Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Oscar Movie Review: Revolutionary Road
With Oscar season upon us, it's time for some movie reviews. To help you save time and money, I'll start with the worst.
Richard Yates, author of the novel Revolutionary Road, was once a darling of American literature. His talent was compared to J.D. Salinger and John Cheever. This novel, his first, was a finalist for the National Book Award, along with such modern classics as Catch-22.
But his books never sold well. In fact, for awhile, ALL of his books went out of print. Before this movie came out, the name Richard Yates barely registered with anyone any longer outside of a few obscure, elite corners of academia.
It's easy to understand how he fell so far. His view of the world is skewed and myopic. The product of a broken home and two broken marriages, and a victim of alcoholism and mental illness, Yates seems to have made the classic mistake of thinking that because he was unhappy and fucked up everyone else must be unhappy and fucked up too.
There is this certain type of person who loves to sneer at regular, ordinary family life. Many of these are amongst the intelligentsia, many others are in artistic or other sorts of lifestyle communities. These are the sorts of people who derisively refer to children as "spawn". Whenever I hear that word, I feel a tremendous urge to whack such people in the head with a baseball bat.
Richard Yates might as well be the patron saint of such people.
This movie is a two hour long rant about how regular, middle-class family life is a horrible, soul-destroying living death. Such a contention, in my books, is ignorant and tantamount to a hate crime. I would sooner recommend going to see a snuff flick or a hardcore anal bestiality porno.
Winslet's acting was adequate, although it was a little hard to tell because it was so hard to identify with the character's gigantic determined-to-be-miserable stupidity.
posted by Mentok @ 12:36 p.m.,
