Slept a friend's place last night...it her house warming kinda thing...and it turns out that since she didnt have anything in the frigde..Therefore all the three of us had in the morning was hot cup of tea, and some conversation. Nothing else!
Well our conversation drifted from this topic to that topic...and for some weird reason, Arjun talked about his trip back home to India a few months ago when he was promoted from business class to first class because of the many air miles he had accumulated! Obviously he talked about how short the trip was, with all the excellent treatment. You could see he had never had that kind of treatment before. That is not to say I was not a tad jealous. With his baby-ish face, an air hostess easily mistook him for a kid who is travelling without his parents, but he cut her short by saying he works for the oil and gas industry....and then requesting for his drink!
He then mentioned that it reminded him about the movie UP IN THE AIR starring George Clooney, as Ryan Bingham, a corporate dude who is hired by cowardly bosses from the round the world to fire employees for them. As such he is always on the plane, travelling round the world, and spending a few days at a time in hotels. More importantly, is Ryan's philosophy, since he lives a life free of any relationships with people and things. He is got no mission in life, except this. To accumulate the a million air miles, as he believes only six people have done this. Of course, as you might have guessed, after achieving this ambition, he realises that his philosophy was after all wrong.
This movie reminded me of THE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, a movie I watched a few months ago on a weekend away with a group of friends. They have similar themes running through them! It also brings back The TITANIC stars, Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet (reunited again after The TITANIC). The movie is based on Richard Yates’ acclaimed 1961 debut novel, going by the same title. It is directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition). Warning is, there are scenes with nudity and sexual nature,
This is a movie that you can’t just watch for fun! After watching it, my ex-girlfriend (then my girlfriend) said she didn’t enjoy it because it was a bit depressing, some other friends called it their movie of the year. Others were simply astounded. It is not the classic Hollywood, happily ever after kinda movie. It is simply different.
The story revolves around a beautiful couple living in sub-urban America in the 1950s. Don’t fret, because it is story that has huge relevance even to us today. April (Kate) is a beautiful wife, and a stay-at home mother raising two kids, while Frank Wheeler is her handsome an office employee. They exude a calm, confident exterior of an extremely happy married couple; you almost admire their lives, seemingly full of joy and warmth. A prefect couple, an idyllic image of the American Dream we all have come to admire. Everything seems perfect; their neighbours are all full of envy.
Is there a creeping frustration within them, an inability to be fulfilled by their relationship and careers? Whether someone feels a sense of regret over past actions, or is facing certain mid-life struggles. The characters in the movie are all faced with these questions...and maybe a more important question. This couple believes they are somehow more special than the people living around them on Revolutionary Road (by now, you know where the movie borrows it title), and they deserve better than this.
Was a doomed marriage from the start? What seems to be the real problem here?? It sometimes hard to know whom or what to blame for the film’s events! Is it the sub-urban surroundings? Is it the place where you live that normally kills your dreams? The job you are doing? The people around you? Are they therefore victims of the very system that ensnares them? Or are they victims of their poor decisions? Either way, it is a tragedy, and the movie constantly forces us to ask this hard questions!!
Could it be that April’s dreams and passions in life died when she became a stay-at-home mother? Will flying away to Paris, and getting a job there solve the problem? Perhaps, Frank deserves better, can quit his job, do some writing in Paris, as he figures out what he wants to do in life! Could he be better than the job that he currently does? Unfulfilled dreams and passions? How do we explain the temptations of infidelity? How does April escape her emotionally dead life? Flying to Paris and starting all over again seems to be the perfect solution. What is wrong with Frank’s philosophy when he says that "All I know is that I want to feel things, really feel them."
Then enters, John Givings, the mentally unstable son of a local real estate agent (Kathy Bates). While watching him, you cant help but think that he may not be crazy after all. Maybe everyone around him is crazy! He seems to see through the veneer of all this. In one of the brilliant quotes from the movie, John says “Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” Perhaps, it will take an encounter with a “crazy” person to drum sense into all of us.
Richard Yates, in talking about the book said in 1972, that “I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs — a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price”
Wait, a minute, WHAT IS THE PROBLEM here? Until we correctly diagnose the problem, we cannot prescribe the right medication. Are the Wheelers’ lives an anomaly, or are they norm? Is life all about a happy marriage, secure dream job, or nice neighbourhood that we aspire for? Is our purpose in life bland, and mundane? Or like April Wheeler says “Look at us. We're just like everyone else. We've bought into the same, ridiculous delusion.”
