This Precious Life

When April is polite, she could mean a lot more than the cordial words that she says. Her pleading to her husband to, “Take me home now, Frank? Please?” could mean “I want our conversation to end.” Peeling potatoes must be one of the most mundane chores in America and in the movie, April was seen doing just that. She was peeling for her husband, peeling for her son, peeling for her daughter, peeling for herself. Peeling, peeling, peeling all day long.

Frank and April are both creative types. By that I don’t mean that they sleep in in the morning and party all night but that April studied to be an actress and Frank aspired to be a cashier in a cafeteria to avoid being yet another grey-suit at a large conglomerate as his father was.

But then Frank and April got married and pregnant. All of a sudden, they were hunting for a house in the suburbs and a grey-suited job in exactly the same company that Frank’s father had worked for.

April: This is what’s unrealistic. It’s unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working year after year at a job he can’t stand. And coming home to a place he can’t stand, to a wife who is equally unable to stand the same things.

They told themselves that nothing is permanent and dreamed of migrating to Paris where Frank had visited once. In Paris, “People are alive there, not like it here.” In Paris, Frank and April can live and feel again.

When they were finally able to make concrete plans to move, Frank’s colleagues and friends thought they must be either crazy or immature.

Frank: We are running. Running from the hopeless emptiness of the whole life here, right?

But they couldn’t run. Life trapped them at Revolutionary Road, where their house is.

When April said, “Thank you, I’ve enjoyed breakfast very much too,” as she waves goodbye to Frank as he goes off to work, what she really meant was, “This is the last time I am scrambling eggs; after this, I am aborting my mid-term baby and killing myself.”

April: I wanted In. I just wanted us to live again.

Don’t watch this on a Sunday night when you are about to put out your suit for Monday morning’s office job.

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