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Sam Mendes Hauls A Trailer Down REVOLUTIONARY ROAD!
Beaks here...
Richard Yates's REVOLUTIONARY ROAD isn't just one of the greatest books I've ever read, it's also one of the most beautifully written. And when you consider that its spiritual-decay-in-suburbia aesthetic has been emulated by everyone from John Updike to Matthew Weiner (who's been refreshingly aboveboard about its influence on MAD MEN) over the last forty-seven years, this is probably why people are still being dazzled by it today.
I don't know how Sam Mendes plans to compensate for the absence of Yates's voice in his much-ballyhooed big-screen adaptation (btw, that anticipation is mostly for the post-hypothermia reunion of Leo and Kate, not for the novel's popularity amongst those damned elites), but if he can't find a way to suggest the inner turmoil of the characters (and this anxiety accounts for a huge chunk of the book's prose), he's just going to have another gorgeous looking movie about not much at all.
It's disconcerting when I hear people bemoan Yates's novel (generally without having ever read it) as another "dark side of suburbia" yarn. If done right, that's not what this is at all. Watching the new trailer (unburdened at last by Mary Hart's hilariously inappropriate narration!), I get the sense that Mendes, um, read the book and liked it?
Look, we're not going to "yea" or "nay" this sucker until it screens this November. The film opens commercially on December 26th. As ever, I am pulling for Mendes.
(Good or bad, if this movie bombs out with audiences, consider this quote from Yates's biographer, Blake Bailey: "Most people don't like reading about, much less identifying with, mediocre people who evade the truth until it rolls over them.")
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All his movies are "fine". Ripley, perhaps, the finest of the lot.
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RIPLEY was Minghella.
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"Waa! Waa! We live in a wealthy nation where all our needs are met comfortably, except we're burdened by pesky responsibilities (like having a job and raising our children), preventing us from racing off to Paris and living REAL LIFE. Working for a living and having a family just isn't REAL enough for me! Washing dishes and earning a paycheck just isn't REAL! Waaaaa!" Give me a fuckin break. I'm sure the book is beautifully written, but damn, the yearning whine of this trailer is like a parody of itself.
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ahhh phewy. damm women always complaining.
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who want something more out of life, and they don't know what that is, but all they found themselves doing is whateverone else does and they hate that this is what they are- ordinary plain simple and trite. And they like to fuck a lot. Cause fucking is a good way to cope for being nothingness.
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You sell it all. Your dreams, your hopes, your believes, and yourself for a Aweet Piece of A. One day it was you and your world and your goals. Then came Sweet A and you were sure to have you some of that Sweet A. Playing with that Sweet A got you married and eventually it got you kids, and they came first and the Sweet A got sour, and you stopped getting it, and all your friends dissapeared cause kids are annoying and Sweet A got mad anytime you wanted to hang around them. Maybe you still got one friend and that freinds also married to some Sweet A. Now you find yourself working some shitjob that keeps the A and the kids happy and whole. And now, well- Isn't Sweet A Great!
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I think it incredbile.
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look at the range of contempt, just in a few posts. people that never dip below the surface in life, and never question their lot, they (not surprisingly) never latch onto art that explores this uncomfortable feeling.if you read (or see) Eugene O'Neill's ""Long Days' Journey into Night", and you don't feel anything, you don't GET anything out of it...then you are not going to like Sam Mendes' films. he chose to adapt this work because it inspired him in the way that the American Beauty script inspired him. we all have a surface life, this daily incessant whir that we begin to focus on as though it really is our life. but what is under the surface is much more interesting. and if you chalk it stupidly up to "suburban whining", then you have completely and tragically missed the point. Beaks, you and I can see it opening weekend, and contribute to it's $3 million opening weekend. these guys can see it 10 years from now when they get it.
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YEAHHHH. Had to say it, someone was going to eventually.
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As I said before, this is familiar territory for him. If the book is good then fine, but still doesn't look like it's setting itself apart. I am a Mendes fan, think he's 3 for 3 but I want something different!
However these movies are impossible to tell whether or not they are good until they actually hit theatres. -
Though I disagree that to dip below the surface in my life I have to align myself with Beaks and his love of a suburban couple going through an existential crisis. I can knock those out for myself just fine.
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Granted, I ain't saying it doesn't look good, but it's obvious what that it is, and coupled with the "just before 2009" release date...yeah.
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Looks like it has a completely different tone. And no goofy art kids.
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It's stuck with me as much as any book I've ever read, and I've reads tons. The Easter Parade is top notch too. It's disturbingly uncomfortable at times...Yates knew how to really get into the mechanics of anxiety and how the simplest of disconnects between a couple catches fire and implodes. You hate identifying with the characters, and yet you can't help it. A film won't be able to capture it completely, but it'll definitely be interesting to see the attempt.
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This looks great. Looks like similar territory...except a tad more visibly existential.
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I'd rather watch that. Still this looks great too.
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Because people might expect the same tone. However, making suburban melodrama riveting entertainment is no easy task. Is this the acting role Leo is banking on this year or is Body of Lies a real Oscar threat? Looks beautiful, either way. Tops my list of what to see this fall along with Benjamin Button, Brother's Bloom, Synecdoche NY, Milk and of course, Sexdrive (that last was a joke, obvi. seriously, who the fuck thought we needed another lame movie about kids trying to get laid?)
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and this doesnt look as good as that. But whatever they're both good actors so i'll watch that shit.
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One of the great and for a long time lost American classics
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Sep 29, 2008 11:52:35 PM CDT
The book is Whos Afraid of Virgina Wolf not American Beauty.
by lovecraftfan
The book makes AB look like playtime. The level of bitterness, depression, and anger are only rivaled by Burton's and Taylors shouting matches in Wolfe.
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Who the hell would watch this? And why?
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but this is sam mendes. he gets an immediate $10 from me.
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Wow I don't know people who like the book for one or did you not read beak's article.
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Suburban Angst is my favorite genre. I love these white-folks-in-despair films. But when I saw this trailer over the weekend, it comes off as whiny. The Artie Lange "WAAAA!!!" repeatedly rung in my head each time they moaned about how perfect their lives are. I'm still seeing it. Mendes is a great director. But it does seem to have the same air to it as rich people complaining about taxes.
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But what would be the bare minimum you would expect when you've got Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet starring, and Sam Mendes directing, eh?
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The point of the book is not that these people are whiny fucks. It's the point that capital gain and wage slavery are inherently soul-crushing, regardless of who you are. The idea that we give up our dreams and ideas and are squashed like bugs just to earn a living and most of us never get beyond mediocre. We're told again and again that we're happy and we've got nothing to complain about but we have no time to explore ourselves, we sell it away to keep warm and fed. You don't like it? Starve. Wow. Truly that's great. The point is not that these people are worse off than others living in shithole conditions in the 3rd world. But they are at the supposed apex of human civilisation. They have what every ad and every government says they want, but it's not what they're after. They don't want to just be comfortable. They want to be human. Just read the book.
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Amen, dogstardude. The film looks really beautiful and good.
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that's one thing, but the trailer certainly makes it seem that the "system" being questioned is basic responsibility for earning a living and raising children. (And this AICN post is clearly about the trailer to the movie, not the book.)
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Part of what makes the book so great is that it directly expresses how suburbia and alienation have largely killed human capacity for community and collective responsibility. It's not that they don't want to care for their kids, but that they're so isolated and run down by their "responsibilities" that they find themselves almost hating their children for killing their capacity for freedom and a life on their terms. This isn't expressed so directly in the book, but it's an undercurrent. That the way we live forces us to give up so much and we have to ask whether it was worth it at all in the end, children included. The notion that the system we participate in which is meant to make us happy and keep us fed for ourselves and for our offspring, makes us despise it and those we're forced to participate in it for. The "earning a living" isn't being questioned so much as the manner in which we're required to achieve this. I can't comment on the movie but the trailer seems to be sticking pretty damned close to the general tone of the book. Seriously, it's an incredible novel.
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Mendes is a hater. He loves to try and stick his finger in the eye of mainstream America, trying to show he is better because he hasn't "settled". He wants to convince us all that comfort and success is measured in the leftist artists eyes and not your own. If you judge by the critics, this will be an "emotional powerhouse" but it will really just suck.
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I think people will relate to this in a big way... Surburbian numbness that many Americans feel. The dialogue from the trailer seems very real and honest with what looks like great performances and chemistry between DiCaprio & Winslet. Really looking forward to this now.
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The problem with this argument is there are people out there with real problems, Not cry-baby problems. Not arbitrary problems. Real problems. There are plenty of people out there that really do "starve". People who have problems stringing together a decent living. I was in a third world country over the summer. I saw people living in filthy shanty towns. Homeless children addicted, begging for my pocket change. Most of these people were sick, dirty, and malnourished. These people have problems. Real problems, not make believe problems. To look at this trailer, it just seems like yuppies crying over spilt milk. I couldn't even get a decent glass of milk over there.
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Of course. I wouldn't for a second claim that people in the 1st world even remotely have it as bad as those in the 3rd. It's incomparable. We have the luxury here of being able to comment on the merits of this film which cost more money than most people would dream of. We don't have to scrape a living out of shit like so many others. I totally recognise that our problems in comparison seem insignificant. But I don't think it's a closed-off system. I think one feeds the other. Our life of comfort and ease is essentially provided thanks to our continual fucking over of the poor and exploitation of their desperate need. Moreover, it doesn't produce what we want anyway! Most people here are desperately unhappy, isolated and spiritually dead inside. They while away their time working jobs they hate and trying to forget how much they're wasting their time by saturating themselves in entertainment and narcotics. They feel guilt over how much luxury they have, yet simultaneously want more to while away their time and fire off those endorphins, the only surefire protection against their emptiness. That we get to eat regularly and have shelter is truly a good thing. But we don't get it out of some divine blessing. We're actively screwing billions of people out of even remotely the same thing so we can have a workable economy. The human soul requires more than food and shelter to survive, it needs meaning and fulfillment. Our society can address some of our needs, but not all. That's the tragedy that Yates' book is about.
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has the worst DVD box art I've ever seen. Direct-to-DVD action flicks starring Lorenzo Llamas have better art! It's just a big, slightly distorted headshot of an extremely goofy-looking Tom Hanks, who has this expression like he was just zipping up his fly in a public bathroom when he notices a drunk, plug-ugly biker has been staring at his crotch for the last few minutes. Its a mix of being annoyed, aroused, and vaguely ill. Meanwhile, the poster art (which is actually quite nice) is squashed down in the corner underneath his enourmous tie like he's about to gobble it up. So to summerize, it looks like a disoriented and aroused giant Tom Hanks has just been caught in the act about to devour a two tiny, rained-on toys. Which is to say, WORST BOX ART EVER. Especially since the movie was kinda really good. And now, one of Newman's last truly great roles.
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"Most people here are desperately unhappy, isolated and spiritually dead inside." Are we projecting here? That's the popular lie that intellectuals try to tell us. The U.S. actually ranks very high on the national happiness index. As crazy as I know it may sound to some people, most Americans are able to find some pleasure in family, friends, individual passions, their career, and yes, even the faith of their choosing.
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