Humorous Kids Monologues
Revolutionary Road is directed by Sam Mendes (Jarhead, Road to Perdition, American Beauty), who makes the most of Justin Haythe’s inspired screenplay. Viewers follow the Wheelers from setback to setback as the unhappy couple readjust and compromise their dreams of living interesting, artistic, avant garde lives, and conform to the standard roles of husband and wife, just like all the other husbands and wives in the falsely idyllic suburb in which they live. They always imagined themselves better than the rest; but this illusion fades before their eyes and ours as the film inches forward. Frank once laughed at his father for toiling his life away as a salesman for Knox Business Machines, but through a cruel twist of fate, Frank ends up working for the same company, toiling in much the way his father had toiled. Every time reality becomes too much for the Wheelers, they fight. The kids they never wanted; the job that’s stealing Frank’s best years; the dreadfully boring existence of a housewife… neither of them asked for this life (did they?) – and yet both of them are living it, hating each other for it in their own small ways, and denying one of the most important tenants of existentialism – taking responsibility. Their fights lead to affairs, their affairs to fights. Time and again April asks Frank to shut up because she doesn’t want to talk about it; and Frank, who loves April and is terrified that at any moment she might leave him, can’t stop talking. Their relationship is built on needs not met, and through the first half of the film there seems to be no way out. But is there a way out after all? April comes up with an idea, another potential game-changer.
April is the real star of this story. Without her inner torment there would be no existential conflict. April decides to take control, to meet the enemy head on. Existentialism is concerned with the freedom of choice and what one does with it. It tells us that we are not only fundamentally free to choose, but obligated to make authentic choices. To choose authentically means we are individually responsible to undertake the challenge of continually creating ourselves. This existentialist responsibility is too often misunderstood as dark, moody, and just plain depressing, when in fact it is a call to action, what Sartre describes as “the sternness of our optimism.” After years of denial April finally sees her responsibility for her own life and understands that she and Frank have not been true to themselves. She comes up with a plan to go to Europe “for good.” Frank was stationed in Paris during his stint in the military, it’s the only place he ever talked about returning to, so April decides they must move there. She sees this as her chance to change their course, set things aright. She discovers that she can make good money as a secretary for NATO, or in any number of government agencies overseas. Frank can then, finally, take some time off and discover what he really wants to do with his life. “Don’t you see?” April begs, “You’ll be reading and studying and taking long walks and thinking… For the first time in your life you’ll have time to find out what it is you want to do, and when you find it you’ll have the time and the freedom to start doing it.” Paris is Shangri-La, and if she can convince Frank of this they’ll leave the wretched burbs behind forever. But be prepared, there is a problem, and the viewer can see it coming from a mile away. Only April doesn’t see what is obvious to us: the plan instantly frightens Frank. For all his brave talk, he seems to fit the role of coward just fine. He says he despises his job, but appears to find comfort in it. He claims to be disenchanted with the dull routine of his days, but discovers relief in the tedium, in the daily ride on the train, in the office banter, and in the meaningless affair with the secretary.
Make no mistake, this is the stuff of existentialism, and existentialism is perhaps best served on a literary plate. Many seminal works of existentialism can be found in the stories and plays of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. But rarely do dramatic works of existentialism translate well into film, especially of the Hollywood blockbuster type. The internal monologues; the ruminating, self-evaluation and angst; the subtle things that make living in the world absurd, have all produced great literature, but not always riveting cinema. Mendes, however, pulls it off through an intuition for picking the dramatic scenes from Yates’ novel and squeezing the intensity out of each one – the bitter fights, the horrible things the characters say and do to each other, the affairs, April’s clumsy attempt at aborting her unexpected pregnancy… Mendes lets us become intimate voyeurs, and in this way breathes a certain kind of awful life into the film. Even the tortured and psychotic John Givings is used mercilessly to shine a light on the protagonists’ flaws. John at first admires the Wheelers for their plan to escape to Paris; but when he learns that they’ve abandoned the idea he becomes distraught and demands to know why. Frank tells him that April is pregnant – a shock to them both, they hadn’t planned on it, but “suppose we say that people anywhere aren’t very well advised to have babies unless they can afford them. As it happens, the only way we can afford this one is by staying here. It’s a question of money, you see.” He explains this to the psychologically-damaged John as if he’s explaining it to a five-year-old rather than to an adult who once had a brilliant career as a mathematician. But John is not so easily convinced. Money is an excuse, not a reason, and he lets Frank know this: “Don’t people have babies in Europe?… What’s the real reason? You get cold feet, or what? You decide you like it here after all? You figure it’s more comfy here in the old Hopeless Emptiness, or – Wow, that did it! Look at his face! What’s the matter, Wheeler? Am I getting warm?” It’s a brutally honest scene, and the most damning in the film: the patient out of the psychiatric ward on a half-day pass is the only one who has the courage to speak the truth.
It’s an existential wake-up call, but it comes too late to stop the downward spiral of events that lead to the tragic climax. Everything has already been set in motion. April has missed her window of opportunity for a safe abortion, and Frank is responsible for the cold, calculated dismantling of their dream. In the end, the Wheelers suffer not from what they perceive to be the trap society has set for them, but from refusing to act.
Revolutionary Road is a brilliant novel, and I highly recommend the film. You won’t often get a chance to see good existentialism on the big screen. In fact, I have not seen a better attempt since Lo Straniero (1967), based on Albert Camus’ The Stranger. To his credit, Mendes is unfailingly faithful to the novel, picking up on the high-drama points of Yates’ story and paying attention to the nuances. Kate Winslet as April and Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank play their parts magnificently. The minor characters are wonderful as well, especially Kathy Bates as the well-intentioned and irritating Mrs Givings, the real estate agent who sells the Wheelers’ their house on Revolutionary Road.
There is no ‘tosh’ (the word Virginia Woolf was fond of using for frivolous or silly writing) in this tale of self-inflicted wounds. In his famous lecture Existentialism Is A Humanism, Sartre tells us that people must take responsibility for themselves, whatever the situation: “We are alone, without excuses. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free.” Yates seemed to have been intimately aware of this. He struggled as an author, and never achieved great success or notoriety in his lifetime, suffering acute alcoholism, and mental problems which sent him to a psychiatric ward. This novel is about the truth of human experience, and Yates’ life experiences were pretty ugly. Perhaps the anguish of his own life allowed him to read between the lines of his generation and identify what was ailing it. He used his personal adversity to feed his work and wrote through it all with a clear, sharp, realism that wasn’t appreciated nearly enough in his day. I first read this novel in college and thought it was okay, although a bit boring. It’s amazing what thirty years of perspective can do for a work of art… I have more of an appreciation and sympathy for Yates’ personal sufferings now, and the obvious influences they had on this classic story of disappointment and loss in America. He expertly pulls apart the social order and how we all compromise ourselves to death behind a veneer of cozy acquiescence. Although set in the post-WWII era, it could just as well have been written today.
I can understand why the story might have seemed dull when I was a kid in college; but today, after having inevitably lived some of the disillusionment Yates wrote about, it’s a whole new disturbing ball game. There must have been times when, much like his character April, Yates just wanted everyone to shut up so he could put it all in perspective. In the final scene of the book, and as the film fades to black, in one of the few humorous moments in an otherwise uncompromisingly relentless tale of existential angst, April finally gets her wish.
© Nick DiChario 2009
Nick DiChario was nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy awards. His novels A Small and Remarkable Life (2006) and Valley of Day-Glo (2008) are published by Robert J. Sawyer Books.
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Movie Review: My Beijing Birthday
(Out of five starfish)
By Perry S. Chen
Can a relationship form between a middle-aged New Yorker and a group of Chinese school kids? After 12 years, would they still remember one another? You will find all the answers in the moving documentary “My Beijing Birthday.”
In 1996, New Yorker Howie Snyder went to China to discover the hearts of the Chinese children. Little did he know what he would find! He started taking comedy classes with a bunch of 6 to 8 year olds in Beijing, and their teacher Mrs. Ma. He discovered many extraordinary things and threw them a birthday party at a Beijing McDonalds that they would never forget.
Howie developed special friendships with the Chinese children, including Liu Hongjun, a naturally funny boy who makes hilarious monologues, and Wang Yifei, a carefree girl who aspires to become a doctor so she could cure all the sick patients in China.
Mrs. Ma is another fascinating character. She is a strict teacher with “tough love” who treats everyone equally, including Howie. One of the funniest scenes in the film is when Mrs. Ma disciplines Howie when he was late for class. You could tell Mrs. Ma loved the kids from the way she smiled proudly when watching their performances.
Twelve years later in 2008, Howie revisited China to work on the Beijing Olympics. The kids had grown into young adults. They had new and exciting experiences. Howie got them all together with the help of Mrs. Ma.
My favorite character is Howie because he is smart, humorous, and he has a good heart. He speaks flawless Chinese and must have been studying the language for many years! How he said the Chinese tongue-twisters is truly amazing! Even my mom, a native Chinese speaker can’t say them as fluently as he!
I noticed some irony in the film. For example, the Chinese kids’ favorite food was McDonalds, even though China is renowned for its own delicate cuisines. Also, Mrs. Ma used comedy to help her overcome the grief and isolation when she was sent to the countryside to labor during the Cultural Revolution.
I gave the movie 4.5 starfish. The film showed us that we should focus more on our similarities rather than our differences. I wish I could see the kids more when they became young adults. I wonder when Howie will make another film about them.
I am going to interview Howie at the 10th annual San Diego Asian Film Festival on Oct 23, following the 4 pm screening at the UltraStar Cinema in Mission Valley. I am very excited about the interview! Watch my reviews of this and other films on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/perryspreviews
This movie is about cross-cultural friendship. Howie observed that the Beijingers are very much like the New Yorkers: tough on the outside, tender in the inside.
You may speak different languages, but friendship speaks only one language.
Copyright 2009 by Perry S. Chen
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Perry Chen is a 9-year-old columnist, movie critic, and radio talk show host of “Perry Previews the Movies” on www.wsRadio.com. He has been featured on CBS Evening News, Fox, KUSI, San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego Family Magazine, San Diego Magazine, SDNN, The China Press, etc. His reviews are available on his website: www.perryspreviews.com. Listen to his radio show on www.wsRadio.com/perry
Perry invites viewers to join him at the free screening of director Howie Snyder’s “My Beijing Birthday” on Friday, Oct 23, 4 pm at the San Diego Asian Film Festival at UltraStar Mission Valley Cinema (7510 Hazard Center Dr. 92108, 858-619-685-2841), followed by Perry’s interview with the director and audience Q&A. More info: www.sdaff.org
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