Revolutionary Road recreates 50s angst

And I can’t wait. Richard Yates won critical acclaim for the book back in the 60s, and was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best English books written from 1923 to now. Yates detailed the book’s subtext in an 1972 interview. He spoke about the 1950s, though when you think about it, how much has really changed since then?

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, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witchhunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that — felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit — and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties.

Now the books has been brought to life on the big screen by a team of A-listers. Socio-politico psychoanalysis aside, the set looks beautiful. The outward bright and innocent contrasts just so with the drudge and dark conformity that rocks the story. Trailer and images below.

[Show as slideshow]

 

 

Tagged as: film, retro