Over at Cinematical, Eugene Novikov dodges the misguided suburban angst tag for Revolutionary Road, and gets at what I believe to be the book's true core:
The jacket pitches it as being about "the opulent desolation of the American suburbs," but Revolutionary Road
is not another of those books that merely mocks the empty lives of
well-to-do suburbanites. It's about our attitudes toward life and love
and each other. Almost a half-century after it was published, it
contains as much devastating insight into human nature as just about
anything else I've ever read.
Imagine a book where you see the characters clearly as weak, insincere, pitiable, sometimes even repulsive – and yet also eerily familiar. Oh, maybe not familiar in the lives they lead or the things they do, but in the way they think, interact, rationalize, compete, calculate.
Imagine a book where you see the characters clearly as weak, insincere, pitiable, sometimes even repulsive – and yet also eerily familiar. Oh, maybe not familiar in the lives they lead or the things they do, but in the way they think, interact, rationalize, compete, calculate.
Yes, people, the story takes place mostly in suburbia, but chalking it up to being merely a screed against life inside the area just outside the city takes the responsibility away from the rest of us. We are all Frank and April Wheeler. We're all fooling ourselves. And we all fall short. But it's okay; it's normal; it's the human condition.
Nice post, Cinematical.
