I don’t know which is worse, going down on the Titanic or dying of heartbreak on Revolutionary Road.
I remember Yates’ book was considered a huge downer when it came out. And so it is today, as a movie.
It’s a pretty good example of a dual-main character plot. Neither main character is easy to sympathize with (empathy, yes). Each is the other’s antagonist.
Other than that, the story moves in conventional, predictable pattern, but there’s an interesting use of the ancient device where you bring on a beggar (sometimes a god in disguise) who sees through everyone’s bullshit and tells it like it is. In this case it’s the realtor’s son, a “certified lunatic,” whose penetrating broadsides are allowed to go on and on unchecked.
Yet I wonder, beyond his usefulness as an inciting factor, do we really need an outlandish megaphone of a minor character to sound the theme?
I didn’t cry at the end.
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