"Revolutionary Road" The American Dream without Faith

I am retuning from my trip to Sacramento for labor day weekend. Not at all one of my favorite places to go. But Eileen is there and so are Sherry, my daughter, and her three sons, my Grand boys. We are just leaving the train station in Fresno as I write this, having written one copy and then having it knocked off before I could save it due to a dead wireless spot here in this big valley that feeds or certainly could be made to feed the world.

Sherry, was confirmed, but here boys need religious training and prayer. I did make the mistake of sunday them to “Sunday school” at Calvary chapel when I was a part of that movement. They have been baptized. And thee Grandmother not willing to wait it out and pursue the annulment process has married a fundie. So, at least the eldest boys have been baptized, however the youngest on Joey hasn’t been and he is now 2 years.

It is always great to be with them even if it is to just drop in with pizza in the middle of homework. Sherry has been confirmed so I know that, although she has lapsed, she is still passing on Catholic based values to the boys, although this is not as good as a catholic education or the full example of a fully practicing mother know some of it is getting through.

It is also Blessed Mother’s birthday.

Yesterday Eileen and I watch a film that was as disturbing as it was brilliant. I don’t think either one of us was familiar with it when we picked it out, although we were itnriegued by the back cover as each of us read it. We had to look at three other dvds and one had to go, fortunately for us it was not , “Revolutionary Road.”

Directed by Sam Mendes. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, all performed brilliantly, something I’ve come to expect from DiCaprio, having seen a few in his bidy of wrok. Most memerioamle are the aviator and the gangs of new York. Eileen haooened to mention that this film represented a reprise of the two actors collaboration in the Titanic. I watched it anyway. Th titanic was not one of my favorite films, in fact the main problem I had with it was that the love story between Dicaprio and Winslet was just not believable for me. This was not due to the acting but the writing. This is a lovely age in which we live, wherein any one can start a blong and be film critic, personally I’d rather criticize the critics than the performers.

It’s somewhat like when Howard cousell used to do Monday night football, his book was aptly named, I Never Played the Game. Having said that I have done little acting in my life and no direting, but I have an appreciation for the talent and art involved in both professions. Besides this poiece is not about performance and directing, This film was well done and well acted.

Which leaves the story and the larger social questions it brings out. The story was moving riveting rerally, what’s the cliché? Like watching a train wreck, but in this case the suspense is in watching the trains race toward each other and wondering if they are going to wreck.

Winslet plays a a 1950s upwardly mobile house wife/corporate wife, and even with two children, another on the way, and even an actng career on the side, is unsatisfied with her role and life in general. Di Cario does his best to be her support in all these roles, but in a clumsy and overbearing fashion, probably stemming from both his love for Winslet and his own frustration with the corporate world, at a time when he hs yet to distinguish himself from his colleagues.

So, while he is constantly trying to be supportive of Winslet, even agreeing to giveup his career and the security that he has built for his family, something I think that men have a little more sensitivity tot than women, the actually building part, not the security part. Women feel secure often times without knowing, what their men may have sacrificed, and the work they have had “to do and the slow pains taking time it takes for a man to “build” security for a wife and family.

This is the Amereican way and the American dream, and the wheelers have it all, or seem to.

What is missing is faith, and this is their undoing, staring first with April’s unraveling, and Frank’s desire to please and appease. April decides they need to follow their adolescent dreams and move to Paris, just drop everything and go, and Frank reluctantly agrees. Although this will not fix theoir relationship. The move an upheaval is presented as if it would.

One impetus for Frank’s reluctant agreement is perhaps his affair with a younger, yet far less interesting member of the secretarial pool. Feeling guilty as well as unfulfilled in his career Frank agrees and the whole process of uprooting is started.

But then the tables turn and Frank is recognized in the corporate world for his talents the pursuit of which by frank and the neglect of the same were the carrot and the stick used by April to convenience Frank to leave the security behind and go to Paris, April even offers to support them, so that Frank can be what he was truly meant to be.

Ultimately it is April’s losing this leverage over Frank, that turns into here undoing. Frank is abbot to make it in the corporate world and in a big way.

The wheeler’s problem though having nothing to do with unfulfilled dreams each, having achieved the American dream are able to pursue those individual dreams. April as an actress and Frank as a creative productive professional in corporate America. No the wheeler’s problem is a lack of grounding – they have no faith. This writer finds this unusual to the point anachrism. That is America in the 1950’s was a faith guided country. These times are remembered by many as some of the best we have lived through, perhaps even the golden age or pinnacle if you will of the American dream.

These people were members of what we know call and rightly so, our greatest generation, and that generation was a generation of faith and optimism.

Driven to despair by the great depression, most of these people and their families were left with nothing but faith. “Saved” both economically and spiritually, this generation was given a chance to show America at it’s finest. After the war this faith and the egalitarian values, which actually did more to change this country and the attitude that leads us now to where we are and lead us out of the great depression. The dual principles of faith and egalitarianism.

Faith was strengthened first by despair and then by a sense of duty in fighting a war that was clearly black and whit good against evil and the fact that our very existence hung on the outcome. It was not a foregone conclusion that we cold defeat the NAZ’s and the Japanese. Hitler could not win a war on two fronts and yet we did, and we succeeded because of our faith in God and the clearness of our mission – as the forces of God saving the world form the evil forces of the other side.
Somehow these values in which the rest of the country was steeped, heck my family still felt the affects of World War II during the 1960s, were missed by the wheeler’s. I like to think the writers and the director deliberately did this to show us and thus instruct us in morality. For it was because of this lack of faith that the wheelers fell. Faith is the glue that holds relationships, families, parishes, and indeed countries together.
I like to think of “Revolutionary Road” as an allegorical tale and a warning that as a country we are heading down the wheeler’s path. A path that includes idea logical relativism, and thus no role for faith based morality. These are things those formt he wheeler’s generation took for granted it was inculcatedin them and put to the test by the war.
Some how we have lost or are losing these values of faith and egalitarianism. Is this lose destroying our country as it destroyed the Wheelers?
“Revolutionary Road” is an excellent yet disturbing film, that I would recommend to any adult, and even to teens and adolescents if watched and discussed with an adult.