revolutionary road

Revolutionary because there is no happy ending. Not even a wry Woody Allen smile on the human condition. Because maybe there cannot be. With the exception of a woman who, it seemed, could not let it in, the audience was still sitting silent as the credits rolled up instead of the usual springing up, fluffling around with coats and heading for the exit. I too felt naked, shocked, facing what I had just seen, and admitted in myself.

It would be avoidance to simply say it is set in the fiftees so there's the usual tale of the bored suburban housewife and the man tied to family and job. A view of a system that provides money/security in exchange for your free spirit.

Of course there are always these deals, conflicts, prices we pay. Yet more, it asked, why do we? Is it that we are too afraid to choose differently? That, no matter who earns the most money these days, even if both support a family, is there still something that means, despite greater wealth, we end up with something a lot less than we need? Do we see this even in the rich? Is it without class or income?

Is it more about that which we inherit from nature and/or nurture that fills us more than others or less than we need? And, if the latter, must that always be with us? Are the sexual sideshows but one of the many ways we try to divert ourselves, or fill our unloved place with someone or something else?

Here was a man wanting to be more, yet perhaps too afraid, not simply of the unknown out there, but of the unknown inside. I am no fan of box office names but I felt Leonardo Di Caprio played the many inner emotions superbly simply through his expressions.

Too, there are many of us who realise our parents were not happy and a child, maybe me, kept them on that route.

But the question is more than that. For, even without dependents, how many of us still opt for security? And, even when we have got the best we can of that, do we have that inner sense of strength, to be more than we have grown (or rather not grown) to be; or even understand what that might be? Unless we do, will we always be looking for love and, from these fears, never grow more than that allows?