I thought it was a good point that someone made a while back about how this was a poor time to release this movie. I can see people looking at the main characters with utter disdain, as they struggle to keep their suburban lifestyle afloat under a horrible economy. So many people are losing their jobs right now, and to see a character completely take a good job for granted is frustrating. But therein lies the point humans are restless, and when the total truth is exposed it can be pretty fatalistic and ugly, even in what seem to be the best of times.

For all intensive purposes the two main characters in Revolutionary Road were doing well, but they were not doing extraordinary. There are many people I have met who have had extraordinary intellects or skills, and many of them are having a very hard time in life. These people have an intense anomie, and are extremely unhappy, some have even developed mental disorders through drug use, and emotional stress. I believe this happens more now than in the 1950s for a variety of reasons having to do with the economy, and a cultural change. However in the 1950s people acted like everything was OK because psychologically most people wanted desperately for everything to be OK. People raising families in the 1950s lived through great uncertainty and instability. Probably even more so than today people felt a great deal of guilt because of their natural human restlessness.

The suburbs are not a great place to raise a family if both the parents are miserable, neither is the city, or anywhere. Clearly the two main characters were utterly shitty parents as they were completely self absorbed. You have to sacrifice to raise a family, and you have to come to terms with it or else you will screw up your kids. What the main characters failed to realize is that even though you have limitations you can still do extraordinary things. People’s lives do not end when they become parents.

I really believe that this movie gets a lot of flack because it looks at a lot of relationship issues with brutal honesty. This movie made me reflect on my own life. I believe people make these pot shots about the movie tearing down the 1950s because they don’t want to look at what it really tears down… The human relationship, and the feeling of being stuck and utterly normal.

I raise a child in a city, and grew up in the suburbs. Kids are kids wherever they are. We have a park and a school right across the street.

Well, maybe that statement is technically true. Maybe it’s a great place to raise them (i.e., from the parent’s point of view). But as a kid struggling to come of age there, it was vapid, repressive and demoralizing.

For many, perhaps the comfort and safety are sufficient. And, clearly, one needs only a little motivation and there is plenty of stimulation to be found in the world.

Except that’s not what’s happening. Kids are driving around and going shopping and watching television.

RR is bang-on about “American Beauty” and “Revolutionary Road.” They have all the moral authority of some of the exploitation anti-Vietnam movies that came out in the 80s. Didn’t take a lot of courage to make them, either.

I’m realizing now there is a much better “suburbs” movie than either of those. For a long time I thought of it mostly as a “coming of age” movie. But it’s clearly both. In a small way, it’s right up there with “Rebel Without a Cause.”

I highly recommend: “Pump Up the Volume” as a much better investigation of this phenomenon.

I agree with you completely. Read my comment above. But one of the reasons why so many brits and aussies have to play Americans is because no one cares about brits and aussies. What kinda of a career would these people have if they only played their own countrymen? Few british and even fewer australian films make much money–the british films may recieve tons of accolades from the hollywood antiAmerican snobs, but at the box office it’s a different story. The film “Australia” was one of the biggest flops in film history, not just in the United States but in australia. The world is focused exclusively on the United States, digging for dirt wherever they can find it. This has been going on for decades. They are blind to their own sins, which can explain why American seem to mosey along while the rest of the world stagnates. The Left Wing love affair with hating the United States is tremendously lucrative. They won’t give it up so readily.

TalkinKamel, you hit the nail on the head. Here’s what really pisses the Left off about Leavittown: it took so much of America’s populations out from under their thumbs! How dare those people be able to have some property of their own, and be able to fix up their houses the way they want to, and be able to just jump in their cars and go places whenever they feel like it! Those are all privileges that should be reserved for the left-wing elite!

I have an old Popular Mechanics issue from 1968. In it, there’s an article about the leftist utopian housing development. It’s one very large high-rise of very small units of multi-generational family housing, one room per adult. There’s a small commons area whose use is strictly regulated. Refrigerators and freezers are restricted so as to prohibit stocking up on food; the idea is that residents should shop for groceries each day. There are no restraunts. The best part: access to transportation is prohibited for most residents. At a given time of the morning, everyone boards a train that takes them all to the industrial complex where all of the jobs are, and the train takes them back to the housing development each day. Individual ownership of vehicles of any kind is prohibited. The article brags that an ordinary-class person will be out of their township only twice in their lives: when they are brought home from the hospital as babies, and when their bodies are hauled off to the cemetary. Travel is reserved for VIPs only.