REVOLUTIONARY ROAD (2008) *** It's not easy to be anyone, there are no easy paths. Pretend at your own risk. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio finally find their way back on screen together, as suffering, tormented....I guess more normal, regular....mirror images of their characters in Titanic. The dark side of staying together; the bright side of being torn apart. If there's anything special about this relationship they won't have it, submerged again. They're brilliant, if not particularly welcome, and Sam Mendes perfectly frames them in lives of quiet desperation that are never-at heart-quiet. Desperation, he would say if he were Sartre, can never be quiet. Michael Shannon as the breath of unwanted, disassociated sanity, Kathy Bates as every woman in a supermarket, but outside. I, um, really love Titanic. The moments of joy and laughter-and there are several-only arise as the viewer is so proud to come from the gene species that produced Leonardo and Kate, a pride that transcends even the curse of our similar relation to the characters they portray.
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