My Revolutionary Road
Caution: This post contains information about the plot of the new movie, Revolutionary Road.
I not only understood the new movie Revolutionary Road; in many ways I feel I lived it. There are many books and films of young people who set out for far away places in search of the unknown and unpredictable. There are fewer books and films about middle-aged people “living lives of quiet desperation.” But it is a rare book or film that stars a 30-ish couple with children and a good life by most standards who decide that the husband will give up his promotion, they’ll sell everything, and all move to a foreign city.
I understood why April, the wife and mother, who loves her husband and her children, committed adultery. Unlike April in the film, however, my conscious mind was not aware of the desperate urging of my subconscious that something vital was missing in my life. I was in the paradise of Santa Barbara at that time, living in a lovely home with a view of stately mountains in one direction, and a gorgeous ocean in the other direction. With my loving husband of 15 years, my growing son, my affectionate dog, year-round sunshine and interesting activities, I thought I had everything I wanted. However, I do think April would have understood why I was horrified one morning when I woke up and realized I knew what the next 20 years of my life would be like.
Although BootsnAll readers would most likely be sympathetic to April’s intense need to travel abroad into the unknown, I attempted to watch Revolutionary Road from an average person’s viewpoint. I understood how people could think of April and Frank as ungrateful for what they had, self-indulgent, and yes, childish and selfish. Yet, I respected the fact that the wife understood her own deeper needs for something else and was able to ignite her husband’s under-expressed and less desperate dissatisfaction with his life. All my attempts over several years to convince my husband he wanted to live in other countries failed completely. I finally had to accept that he didn’t want to.
I had friends who looked at me with the same incredulity as the couple’s neighbors when they announced their plans to leave. My friends couldn’t believe I was giving up my marriage and leaving my 12 year old son who chose to stay with his father who offered a more secure, familiar, and predictable future. It didn’t help that I, myself, couldn’t really explain why, or what I wanted. I had no plan. Going to Israel in 1983 as an immigrant at the age of 40 further shocked them. And, traveling to mostly unknown China in 1988 because I was curious about the place and its people made no sense to anyone I knew.
The husband’s choice at the end of this sad film was to somewhat alter the career he had disliked, move to another U.S. city with his children, and basically retain the lifestyle he had been ready to give up only with his wife’s encouragement. My choice was to follow my wanderlust around the world for the next 16 years. I consider them the best years of my life. My former husband remarried and still teaches and lives in the same paradise we went to together in 1975, confirming that there could have been no way for us to have remained together and fulfilled our individual dreams.
What is the essence of the restlessness that turns good lives topsy turvy? I wondered many times if my need to roam the world would have been satisfied if I had done it in my youth before marriage. But I don’t think so. Many years and wrinkles later, I once again live in a paradise near another part of the spectacular Pacific Ocean. I love my home, my surroundings, and my many physical and mental activities. And yet….I still occasionally feel an inner restlessness that pushes me out of paradise. The urge is not as strong, and it has been modified by age, but it hasn’t left me. April would understand.
After seeing the movie, I couldn’t help uselessly wondering what the couple’s life would have been like if their story had been set in present time when she wouldn’t have died from a do-it-yourself abortion. Would their children and the marriage have thrived in Paris? Would changing location so drastically really have changed their lifestyle so much? Would it have filled the void in their lives and their relationship? Would they have kept traveling? Would both husband and wife have felt fulfilled? Would their marriage and love still have ended tragically? Would they have ever settled down permanently?
Tags: Revolutionary Road; why people travel abroad;, Travel
