14 September 2009
April Wheeler (Revolutionary Road)
)Published on September 14th, 2009 @ 08:18:22 pm, using 1038 words, 901 views
It’s impossibly simple - what we want. It fits perfectly inside the picture we draw for ourselves up in the attic of our minds, the one no one has access to without our say and one that may very well not make much sense at all. But hard-headedness dictates that it fits - yes, it does. And it’s… well, impossibly simple. Charcoal on paper. Black on white.
When asked whether she wanted out - out of the country, out of the picture perfect 50’s suburban life she had been leading with husband Frank, April Wheeler (played by Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road) corrects the thought behind the question by retorting ‘I wanted in. I just wanted us to live again.’
And here it comes at you like a tidal wave, to sweep you under an expanse equal in size and depth to a sea - the feeling of wanting in yourself and not quite knowing how to go about finding a way fully in. It comes with an irresistible urge to explore that ample 4-letter verb: to live.
What does it mean to live? How many different ways can living be practiced to its fullest potential? How does the title role of living handle a supporting cast of obstacles and temptations, hindrances and setbacks, false hopes and false alarms that constantly (often unfairly) compete for attention. Life, co-starring such needs as of comfort, reassurance, safety, a sense of importance, such fears as of failure. How to successfully cope with the human struggle against dissatisfaction, the sometimes desperate yearning for more?
I wonder if the Ethan Hawke line from Before Sunset…
I just feel like I’m… designed to be slightly dissatisfied with everything… You know, I mean, like… always trying to better my situation. You know, I satisfy one desire, and it just agitates another, you know?
…is an unarguable truth, a chip we all share. I wonder about the people who’ve seemingly managed to insert themselves in the pictures they’ve drawn. Or whether even those who’ve attained what they set out to attain are liable to see their object of desire (be it freedom, success, wealth, what have you) lose appeal once fleshed out into a third dimension.
I wonder about the Wheelers’ demise as a couple and their individual choices of forking paths which led to it. I wonder from which set of choices and characteristics the fountain of optimum living springs. I wonder what combination of factors brings about the personal degree of fulfillment we seek. And where sanity lies to be kept safe - whether in the unrealistic, irrational boldness of an April; in having the backbone to step firmly onto Frost’s Road not taken. Or in the restraint of a Frank; in joining the ruling majority, in allowing one’s actions to be dictated by responsibility and a sense of duty.
April Wheeler is her own emotional hurricane, her own earthquake, her own natural disaster. She’s chained to the bottom of a life colored with dissatisfaction by a collection of less than well-thought out choices and wrong turns. She leans on the impractical as a quick fix. She places herself at the center of all my fears as she interlaces her fingers and offers me the very boost that puts me on the fence about her. She is not someone I can simply dismiss. I take turns believing and doubting the feasibility of her ideas. She is not someone who can be reduced to a shade a gray. She is black juxtaposed on white and not a homogeneous mixture of the two. She’s selfish and altruistic. Brave and a coward. A doer but simply not good enough at it. She flows in and mingles with my fears in all her ghostliness like a drowned emblem and/or warning sign, treading the edge of sanity with a brand of insanity I fully (if uncomfortably) understand. She’s clear and vivid in my mind, fully human in all her mediocre past (as an aspiring theater actress), bland present (as a suburban housewife right out of The Feminine Mystique) and merely possible… sad, beautiful, bright, trying, dull, tempestuous, unlived… future.
—— ∫ ——
April Wheeler in her own words:
Tell me the truth Frank, remember that? We used to live by it. And you know what’s so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they’ve lived without it. No one forgets the truth, Frank. They just get better at lying.
I wanted IN. I just wanted us to live again. For years I thought we’ve shared this secret that we would be wonderful in the world. I don’t know exactly how, but just the possibility kept me hoping. How pathetic is that? So stupid. To put all your hopes in a promise that was never made. Frank knows what he wants, he found his place, he’s just fine. Married, two kids, it should be enough. It is for him. And he’s right; we were never special or destined for anything at all.
(…)
I saw a whole other future. I can’t stop seeing it.
It takes backbone to lead the life you want, Frank.
(Revolutionary Road)
—— ∫ ——
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.(The Road not taken - Robert Frost)
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Movies, Revolutionary Road, April Wheeler, woman, wants, simple, Kate Winslet, future, mediocre, sanity, conformity, The Road not taken, Robert Frost
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