This is the best movie with the least stuff going on I’ve seen in a long time. What I mean by that, is that there’s a lot of great character insight and very little event. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s much anticipated screen reunion could not be much different than Titanic. Set in the suburbs of New York City in a quiet summer in the 50′s, Revolutionary Road is the portrait of people struggling with the question of whether or not to hate themselves or forgive themselves for what they’ve become. The painful irony is that there’s nothing particularly wrong with what they’ve become: a settled, stereotypical family of four in the suburbs with comfortable routines but little excitement. Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) takes the train to work at a boring job as some sort of salesman or sales executive (even he seems unsure of, or at least totally uninterested in, what he does). He leaves behind his wife April (Winslet), and their two children (whom we almost never see), in a quaint white house on Revolutionary Road.

In this summer of their discontent, they realize that they are at the brink of coasting along on a well-worn life path with little chance of change. So April, whose dream of being an actress seems to have drowned in mediocre community theater, seizes on the idea that they can escape their destiny of routine suburban living by selling everything and moving to Paris. There, she plans to pay the bills by working as a secretary while Frank, who once upon a time was the most interesting person she had ever met, can find a new calling in life.

The depiction of their life is brutally realistic. Both actors are terrific, and I’m surprised neither got an Oscar nomination. Winslet’s husband, Sam Mendes, directed and gives this movie the same intense sense of impending doom and import that he did with American Beauty, but he too was overlooked by the Academy. My one quibble with the movie is the character of John Givings, who as a nominally crazy person is the one person in the movie who sees what is really bugging Frank and April and what is wrong with the suburban world. Givings is played by Michael Shannon who was nominated (deservedly) for a supporting actor Oscar, but his character’s insights are a bit too perfect and obvious.