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 SAM MENDES, best known as a British stage director before he won an Oscar for his film directing debut American Beauty in 1999, returns to suburbia in his new film REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. GENEVIEVE PARLEY finds out what drew him back to the white picket fences…
Adapted from the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (also Mendes’ wife), reuniting on screen for the first time since Titanic. They play Frank and April Wheeler, an attractive young couple who in the mid-1950s set up home in a picture-perfect New York suburb. Their life seems idyllic, but they harbour a dream of quitting suburbia for Paris – a dream that stalls, with profound consequences for their relationship.
GENEVIEVE PARLEY: How long have you been familiar with the book? What made you want to adapt it for film?
SAM MENDES: It was handed to me! I read the screenplay four years ago because Kate wanted to play the part, but immediately felt I shouldn’t direct it, because like American Beauty it’s set in the suburbs again. But then I read the book, and it absolutely slayed me. Weirdly, it seems to me not to be about suburbia, but about a marriage. And I realised I absolutely loved those two characters, even though Frank in some ways is weak and manipulative, while April is sometimes cruel and filled with rage. Despite all that, I thought they were wonderful, deeply sympathetic and endlessly fascinating.
GP: Why did you cast Leonardo and Kate?
SM: The idea of Leo came to me when I was reading the book. It was pretty obvious in a way. It was a combination of the two actors and the part. Leo’s is an amazing performance. He’s played a lot of heroic characters, or troubled people with a gun in his hand, but I don’t think he’s ever played a father, or someone who felt his life has passed him by.
As for Kate, she totally got the book, and she wanted to understand April. She doesn’t play within her comfort zone at all. She needed to get inside the head of a woman who acted as April did – and it was tough. She did it with great aplomb and grace. Plus he and Kate have a chemistry that’s so great. They’re like brother and sister. I didn’t have to create a relationship. There was one already there.
GP: Revolutionary Road seems less stylised than American Beauty and your other films.
SM: I felt like it needed a much more honest, direct and simple approach than American Beauty, which was made in a high style, and had fantasy sequences and visual flourishes throughout. But this is a movie that’s about performance. It’s about trying to penetrate below all the layers of skin and get to the essence of somebody.
GP: Despite it being a period piece, the theme of the film feels modern.
SM: I believe it is. There’s a longing at the heart of the book, and I hope at the heart of the movie – the feeling that all these characters are longing for something. They just don’t know what it is. In any era, it’s difficult to wake up in your 30s and realise you’re not living the life you want. If your life is underpinned by disappointment, how do you rid yourself of it? For me, that’s what makes it a universal story.
GP: Do you regard it as a bleak story?
SM: People who love the book say yes, it’s bleak but it’s wonderful: and that’s what I hope people will say about the movie. It’s weird when people say: don’t you find it depressing? I say no. It’s sad and serious, but these are things we should be able to embrace. The idea that drama can’t be entertaining is crazy.
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is screening in cinemas now, rated [M]. Check out WIN STUFF for a special Rave giveaway.
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