Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road,” first and foremost a brilliant adaptation of a landmark portrait of a marriage tearing apart at the seams penned by Richard Yates in the 50’s, is also an ironic conglomeration of definitive talent. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as a young, ambitious married couple whose idealism and desire to steer clear of conformity is slowly but surely breaking them apart, it is obstinately humorous to recall that at the very beginning of their careers the pair embodied everlasting love that just so happened to be torn apart by an unfortunate run in with an iceberg in James Cameron’s “Titanic.” Here, once again, their passionate romance hits icy, rocky waters but this time they have no one to blame but themselves.

The integral question posed in Yate’s incisive novel and now Mendes’ best directorial effort to date is this: “Is it possible for two people to separate themselves from the ordinary and the mundane without breaking apart?” Frank and April Wheeler, played by DiCaprio and Winslet respectively, are in that regard post-War American guinea pigs.

Newly married and hungry to begin their new, interwoven lives, the two move into their picturesque suburban home on Revolutionary Road, right in the thick of conventionality at its most blatant where the house remains undisturbed but adorns a devilish desire to devour the ambitions of its inhabitants. It is here where they comfortably and brazenly – perhaps even irrationally – declare themselves free from the stereotypical inertia that plagued the existences of men and women in that era. Their presumption that they are different sets off a ripple effect through the course of their lives, and when it finally catches up to them that perhaps their great, diverse life might never come to pass, the true power of the story is evoked with brutal force.

For all their proud defiance and clearly different, maybe even special appearances and essence of life, they eventually find themselves living the exact lives they didn’t want and never expected to. Frank becomes a modern image of his father, a decent man with a decent job without the spark and edge that made him appear so magnetic just years before and April an isolated romantic whose hopes and dreams are encased in an unshakable patina of suburban recluse. When April comes up with a plan to move to Paris with the hope of reigniting her and her husbands former passion, she unwittingly uses it as a symbol of courage – trying to grasp at the chance to be the person and the couple she always wanted herself and her husband to be, without realising that doing so will ultimately expose who both of them truly are.

We’ve seen this set up a hundred times before, with these same dreams being dashed, held onto by the same characters but there is something eerily nuanced about Mendes’ handling of the shattering tale of desperation – something that transcends the fact that such desperation has, and will continue to, reverberated within modern relationships for decades.

It’s head scratching that it has taken this long for Yate’s deeply observant indictment of conformity of the American life to take on a cinematic form, but it shouldn’t be overlooked that it’s hard to imagine how the adaptation by Justin Haythe could have been more faithful without disturbing the immense complexity of the story. In the context of the novel, it is easy to get drawn into the lives of Frank and April – their inner confessionals become apparent almost instantaneously. In the film, Mendes had the complicated task of dramatising that without satirising or romanticising the couple’s dilemma, and he pulls off the artful detachment quality of Yate’s novel skilfully.

There is a gray area that exists between who the characters in the film pretend to be to those around them, masking their inner conflictions, and those who they truly are, when their make up is removed and their starched shirts and neatly presented selves are undressed. And in that gray area exists loneliness, regardless of whether or not an individual is actually alone, that is crushing. It is that loneliness, that sense of being unable to share one’s deep desires and truths that drives “Revolutionary Road,” and sparks more than a few gut-wrenching scenes featuring intense marital arguments and aching, withdrawn silence that is just as devastating to behold.

Winslet and DiCaprio use their long running friendship to infuse a genuine sense of intimacy into their characters and how they relate to one another. From the get-go, it’s clear as daylight as to why other ordinary individuals would envy the pair as they do seem to have it all. Both give their best performances of their already otherworldly careers, but because Winslet has already defined herself as the finest English speaking actress of her generation, it comes as something of a surprise that Leo seems to have finally made the transition into an adult like, mature manner of performance.

That isn’t saying that his past performances don’t exude a certain essence of maturity, but none come even close to his monumental turn as Frank Wheeler, an emasculated young man whose preliminary lust for a life unlike his corporately inclined father vanishes under the weight of his self-diagnosed worthlessness and vulnerability. Few films manage to maintain an electric dramatic intensity when drifting between moments of heightened emotional pyrotechnics and quiet, detached self-reflection the way “Revolutionary Road” does; and the result is scorchingly evocative.

Right in the middle of the now unshakable tension between Frank and April waltzes in one Mr. John Givings (Michael Shannon), a mentally disturbed, alarmingly troubled middle-age son of the Wheeler’s estate agent (played fantastically by Kathy Bates). It almost comes across as too easy or contrived that John, being as mentally ill as he is, is the one and only person who exposes the true motives behind April’s intention to move to Paris to escape and start over. But it’s deeper than that, because it is obvious that John himself is entirely unable to move forward with his own life, trapped by illusions of his own.

His presence allows for even more probing questions to pop up; between the Wheelers and John Givings, whose lifestyle is truly the sanest? Does one have to remain numb to function in society? Especially if doing the opposite might very well land one in a mental institution. In that regard, John Givings, as portrayed with blistering energy and terror by Shannon, is a representative of the truth, but also of the costs of being so – further complicating the hopeless, empty plight of the Wheelers.

What is left out in the adaptation process remains irrelevant, as the spirit of Yates timeless, endlessly probing account of desperation at its most complicated is adhered to without fault. Mendes finally comes into his own as a director, instead of showing off his panache at depicting the inherent troubles of marriage – be it in Suburbia or elsewhere, that’s extraneous – he crafts an unpretentious, haunting yarn of dramatic rhythms and beats that cocoons the viewer with all its might, making the Wheelers tragedies that took place on Revolutionary Road crawl under our skin and the cathartic, explosive drama of “Revolutionary Road” impossible to shake off.

Fatac Rating: ****½

Revolutionary Road. Directed by Sam Mendes. Written by Justin Haythe based on the novel by Richard Yates. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, David Harbour, and Kathy Bates. Running Time: 119 minutes. Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.