Revolutionary Road is yet another in the long line of films and books that tries to blow the lid off the secrets of suburbia. The book comes from what might be called the first generation of suburbaphobia that one sees in books like The Man In the Gray Flannel Suit, and continues on still to this day as a solid genre of American fiction, most recently (and clinically slick) in Mad Men. Revolutionary Road, though, is more than a damning expose of the suburbs, it is a problem movie, a movie that tries to examine what is wrong with the world and, ideally, provide a solution. Like The Man In the Gray Flannel Suit, the movie creates stark and simple choices that almost 50 years latter look more like the warning 60’s counter culture headed, than a rich examination of the times.

Revolutionary Road follows April and Frank as they struggle to reconcile what they were as young people, which we glimpse briefly at the beginning of the movie, with what they have become now: two kids, a car, a house in the suburbs, and a life of boredom and dissatisfaction. Frank, who as a young man said he wanted something different, has become the 9 to 5 man who hates his job and cheats with the young secretary. It is clear from the outset that Frank is disappointed, but he is not unwilling to continue in the same way he has for some time, he just needs a small change. An affair might do it, but he is to tied to the middle class dream and holds on to the brief moments that we briefly see before the title credits.

April, though, has not forgotten what she once wanted to be, an actress, and in an early scene she is crying in a dressing room, aware that she will never be an actress, never be what has been her identity for over ten years. Frank, insensitive to the moment, can only say, “well that’s finally the end of the […] players.”  From this point on the relationship is a battle between the forces of normalcy, work,  friends, neighbors, the daily routine, that constantly pull Frank and April from the idyllic party where they first met, and the desire to be free, to live the life that one has always dreamed. The story will continually argue between the two points of view, and the choices are stark and unbendable. But since suburbia is so stultifying it is only to be expected.

Shortly after the failure of the play and the ensuing argument, April comes up with the idea of moving to Paris. She convinces Frank who is reluctant at first but does warm to the idea slowly even though all their friends and associates think it’s an impractical idea. The impracticality of it, though, is the point, because the dream has to be in such stark contrast to the world they live in that anything less would just be living the same life. It has a bohemian sensibility and a glamor that isn’t so much about a place for Frank to think about his future, but away live in a postcard reality where there are no obligations. The only person who thinks it is a good idea is the son of their realator who has just gotten out of the mental hospital. He is the fool, the jester, the conscience of the film and when he speaks you hear the brutal truth, which at first coincides with Frank and April’s ideas, but soon becomes an accusation that they are unable to withstand because he is correct. The fool always shows one how to escape the madness if you are only willing to listen.

Madness of the suburban life begins to become oppressive when April becomes pregnant and Frank doesn’t want to move to Paris with a baby nor does he want her to have an abortion. Until this moment the film has argued between the two tropes of suburbaphobia—conformity and freedom—and the dialog and arguments feel as if one is reliving 50 years of this kind of story. To resolve the problem all one has to do, as occurs in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, is quit your Manhattan job, which most likely is at an ad agency since they are the most soulless of all jobs, and move out of the city to real life. Revolutionary Road, of course, uses Paris, but the affect is the same.

In Revolutionary Road, though, the stakes are higher because Frank has been offered a great job and doesn’t want to quit. Perhaps he thinks this is the thing he really wanted to do; perhaps it is just what one should do. What ever the reason Frank insists on taking the job and they begin fighting at every turn until they have a grand battle that is one of those cinematic explosions of rage that no matter how old the sentiments of the film are still feels powerful. The day after the fight April is calm and seems to have accepted the reality that they cannot move to Paris. It is an eerie acceptance, almost robotic. When Frank goes to work, though, she tries to giver herself an abortion and she bleeds to death. The choice has become a choice between the suburbs and death. There is horror greater than that of the suburbs. True, the abortion is not an explicit suicide, but the pregnancy represents just more of the same: another child and another tie to what April wants to leave, and what everyone should fear—the suburban hell.

Heartbroken, Frank moves the kids back to New York and everyone in the suburbs forgets about them since they are a disturbing memory. It is the final element of the suburban legend: the shallow, unforgiving conformity that can not have any deviants within it. Perhaps Frank who is now devoted to the kids has learned the lesson—you must value those you are with, not the material—for the last shot of him is sitting on a park bench watching the kids.  A cautionary scene one should not forget.

Despite the suburbaphoiba the film is solid and once April’s pregnancy is revealed, the suburbia debate recedes into the background and the film is less concious of its roots. And the final scene of the film with its slight comic reliefe may truely be the answer that cuts between the two polls. Tuning out the hearing aide might, in the end, be more practical than dropping out.