Richard Yates 1962 novel was a major on-ramp to the parkway that led America out of the rosy illusions of the Eisenhower era and drove increasingly dysfunctional families through decades of domestic dissection at the movies. Troubled couples from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Scenes From a Marriage, An Unmarried Woman, American Beauty and Little Children share the same struggles, partly because, from the 1950’s onward, marriage turned a dark corner when happily ever after became a quaint outdated concept. We’ve seen marriages fall apart in dozens of films, but Revolutionary Road looks intriguing to me because it returns to a time when society’s pressures to make things work were so great that the distinction between breakups and breakdowns must’ve seemed especially hard to separate. It’s not a pretty picture, but with Kate and Leo and cars with chrome-tipped fins, it promises to be a really beautiful journey through bleak dramatic territory.
Nextgen Oscarwatcher: Best Original and Adapted Screenplay Analysis
For this week, continuing on with the above the line category talk, it’s time to focus on the writing Oscars,...
