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Based on Richard Yates’ celebrated novel, Sam Mendes’ screen adaptation is a battle between the easy course and the road less traveled. Set in the 1950s, the original book was an indictment of the conformity of the Eisenhower era, however, the film carries into today a difficult examination of nothing less than the meaning of life. This challenging material is at times hopeful and at other times desperate. In AMERICAN BEAUTY, Mendes showed that he understood suburban malaise. Now he returns to the same world without the comforting veil of real world fantasy, lying bare hard truths that we pretend do not exist.

Frank and April Wheeler, played by TITANIC’s famed couple Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, are what appears to be the ideal couple. They live in a nice home in the suburbs with their two kids. Frank has a good job at the Knox Company and April is a stay-at-home mom. However, this is not the life they had planned for themselves when they first met. Having served there in the war, Frank has always wanted to return to Paris, and April had trained as an actress. Frank doesn’t even know what he’s selling at his “good job” and local theater just isn’t enough to fulfill the emptiness inside April. She has a plan, which everyone thinks is childish, but it’s exciting for both her and Frank. Sadly life seems to always get in the way of our grand plans.

Mendes, Winslet’s husband, cast her first and she went and recruited DiCaprio. I wonder if taking these roles was a subversive poke at their previous one-dimensional true love couple. A “what if” Jack and Rose made it off that boat. But that’s only hopeful thinking. As a true TITANIC reunion, Kathy Bates appears as Mrs. Helen Givings, the Wheeler’s real estate agent, who likes the “perfect” couple and hopes that they can help her with her troubled son, John (Michael Shannon, SHOTGUN STORIES), who has been receiving shock treatments for his emotional problems. When Frank and April meet him, they don’t think his ideas of hopelessness are crazy at all. Its frightening how difficult truths spoken unfiltered can be viewed as insane.

DiCaprio and Winslet just fit into these roles. DiCaprio aged, yet still boyish, good looks seem in complete conflict with the average Joes in his office. DiCaprio teary-eyed smiles balance between sadness, happiness and forced contentment. Has Frank Wheeler resigned from life, finding pleasure in the simple things only because it’s a safe bet? This couldn’t be more different for Winslet’s April. She’s drowning in a sea of conflicting emotions while everyone else around her pretends they’re as dry as a bone. But when Frank reaches out a hand for help, she refuses to take it, rejecting the bland comfort of the shore, holding the water in her lungs as a reminder that she’s still alive. Mrs. Givings and her son represent possible futures for Frank and April. They’ll either buy plastic smiles to hide their wounds, or end up in the loony bin.

Mendes takes a more natural look to this film rightly, setting aside the heighten reality look of his earlier work. Thomas Newman’s score is a lower key version of his work on AMERICAN BEAUTY. These muted elements combined with the subtly changing colors of the costumes and set design combine to create a safe world hunted by sadness. All the craft elements work their subtle magic in the background as DiCaprio, Winslet and Shannon provide the prestige in the foreground with Justin Haythe’s brilliantly written dialogue.

I foresee fights between married couples occurring after they finish watching this film. It touches on marital conflicts that are universal and touchy, especially if one person is more content with life than the other. One of the difficult messages the story deals with is the importance of honesty and communication in relationships. There is little give and take between Frank and April, and their marriage is a victim of one of the most common slow poisons to long-term relationships — the couple growing in opposite directions. But like a great tragic art, the viewer sees their own issues within the characters and inspires them to make changes if they need to. If you’re still interested in seeing this film then you’re a brave moviegoer. My review doesn’t make the film seem like entertainment, but I hope it has conveyed its power. It’s one of the best films of the year.