“No pictures, no attacking — none of that,” warned the junket manager to the online press, who had been assembled for an hour in the tiny Waldorf Astoria ballroom, awaiting their audience with the director and four top-billed stars of Revolutionary Road. The admonition was necessary because two of those stars were of such grand stature, and more so in combination with each other — you may remember, they once pretended to fall in love in front of a green screen whilst standing atop a scale model of a famous boat — that of course the average bottom-feeding, basement-dwelling blogger could be forgiven for forgetting that they were in fact human beings asking questions of other human beings, and not bloodthirsty animals driven feral by the scent of fame.
Not long later, they appeared, as if out of nowhere (although it should be noted that from my seat, I didn’t have a clear view of the door). Kate Winslet, remarkably slim and tan. Leonardo DiCaprio, rocking the wispy facial hair of a posturing adolescent. Kathy Bates, looking just like Kathy Bates, but more so. San Mendes, being British. Michael Shannon, wearing the vague stare of a time clock puncher. The warning, it turned out, was unneeded. The talent cast such a glow on the assembled press that all thoughts of aggression were easily pushed aside. How wonderful life is, now that potential Oscar contenders are in the world!
Speaking of Old Man Oscar (or whatever we’re anthropomorphizing him/it as this year), right off the bat Winslet refuted suggestions that it’s up to her to pick one of her two potentially nominatable performances so as to not pit Paramount and The Weinstein Company in a de facto ad buy cage match. “I don’t know how categorization of actors happens. It certainly has nothing to do with me. It’s my job to make myself available to promote both of these films equally.” Beautiful and diplomatic; proof that the stars are not like us at all.
Somewhat more controversial was Winslet’s statement, made several times by way of response to several different questions, that her character April Wheeler, who tries to salvage her struggling marriage by planning a move to Europe, and is then aggressively reluctant to let an unplanned pregnancy get in the way of that dream, is “heroic.” “For April, Paris represents possibility. The notion that she might be forced to live a life without possibilities is for her the kiss of death…This is a woman who was taken to the emotional brink by the pursuit of happiness, and it literally drove her mad. April is so determined to feel something again, something other than what she has. And that’s a very heroic act, and not cowardly.”
To which DiCaprio, who plays April’s self-loathing, adulterous husband Frank, replied, “My character, on the other hand, is not heroic, and is cowardly. He is a product of his environment.” This is an interesting statement, because it would seem to contradict my reading of a key theme Richard Yates’ book on which the film is based: that people who blame their environment for their problems are actually afraid, unwilling or unable to take responsibility for who they really are. The film struggles to hit Yates’ very tricky tone, and one wonders if this is partially because the source material is open to various degrees interpretations, involving various degrees of irony. Or maybe Leo is right, and I am wrong. Probably!
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