After asking just about everyone what to write about, I find myself with nothing to write about. Beyond the endless and courant stream of conscious thoughts, begging to be materialized, there is nothing of substance. Fortunately, I came upon Sam Mendes' [of American Beauty fame] modest adaption of Richard Yates' magnum opus,Revolutionary Road. A captivating exploration of love turned tragic, of infidelity, and entrapment - Mendes' rendition respects Yates' brilliance and breathes cinematographic life into the tormented characters of Revolutionary Road. And if one doubts the sincerity of his work consider the film's genesis as a passion project of his then pregnant wife - the talented Kate Winslet, who compelled Mendes and later her friend and Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCarpio to take on the project four years later.

I am moved to write for a personal reason. Like Ms. Winslet's character April Wheeler and her husband Frank [DiCarpio], I am likewise chasing Paris in order "to live." Paris, not as a place, but as metaphor for the life we envision. Frank Wheeler reminisces over years spent as a soldier in Paris, and April Wheeler, never having been, foresees her liberation as a working actress. Happiness being a function of expectations and the reality to which we are confined, the Wheelers are painfully confounded by their failure to reach Paris, and suffer the "hopeless emptiness," of the Suburbia, Connecticut.

The Wheelers offer up economic constraints, familial burdens, and arguments of pragmatism as reason for not daring to chase the life they envision miles and miles away. Cooped-up within a quaint home in a neighborhood hemmed by white-picketed fences, their young love withers into a miserable, self-deprecating, and ultimately tragic existence. They grow cold to each other, not for lack of love, but because having stifled their individual and personal flourishing, they are unable to experience the pure and unadulterated love of each other. This tension between April and Frank Wheeler grips the viewer and moves the project from scene to scene. It is the vehicle by which Mendes explores the notion of self-love, or in Aristotelian terms; the idea of "virtuous egoism which opens up the possibility of greater sacrifices for the good of our friends [and lovers]" (Nicomachean Ethics). Like Frank and April Wheeler, I too am chasing Paris, as to become my full and complete self. Until then, I am off the opinion that love cannot withstand beyond the four frames of a lover's bed, and children will do nothing but leave you poor and wanting of your wife's attention.

What twisted logic is lost in my careless words, is dramatically captured and brilliantly restored in the image of April Wheeler trapped behind the multi-celled picture window of an empty home, eyes fixed on the outside world, with blood dripping from beneath her Lily sun-dress and down her wobbly legs, to stain white-washed floors with the sins of her tortured being. For those with no patience for subtlety, Mendes implores the character of John Givings [Michael Shannon], like a madman from Shakespeare's theater, to proclaim that, “many people are unto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopeless,” when like April and Frank Wheeler, we settle for the circumstances of our surroundings, but can't stop seeing a whole other future!

11/7/12