If those blows don’t resonate, it’s largely because Mr. Mendes’s investment in this story feels professional, diagnostic. Part of what makes the novel so powerful, beyond its familiar American theme of self-discovery, is its unwavering fury and how each intimate and acid word feels personal, as if Yates had dredged them up from some place deep inside his own being. No one gets off the hook in “Revolutionary Road,” least of all its author, whose insistence on stripping his characters down to the marrow is so relentless it can’t help but feel like an act of self-flagellation. As a film director, at least, Mr. Mendes comes across as too coolly diffident for that kind of blazing heat. He keeps his distance.
right. revolutionary road is an incredibly perceptive male book, but mendes paints it with broad feminine strokes; leo constantly cast in shadows, (a wildly miscast) winslet always bathed in light. thats not to say frank aint a dick, only that the novel makes it clear it takes two to jitterbug.
[3 netflix stars]
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appointment in samarra « unconquerable gladness // August 14, 2009 at 1:34 pm |
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