The Words of the Cromwell Family
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The Words of the Cromwell Family |
Revolutionary Road (2008) is a powerful movie about love, dreams, hopes and how they relate with human reality. Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife April (Kate Winslet) live in suburban Connecticut in the 1950s. They have pursued the American dream, but begin questioning whether they are truly happy or not. One day, April comes up with an idea that re-energizes her and gives her hope for her life again, and convinces Frank that they should move to Paris, where she will work and he will be free to find his true calling. After some persuasion, Frank agrees to April's proposition and the couple starts making plans and preparations to move.
However, the unexpected occurs and, having rekindled their marital bliss, the couple conceives their third child, while Frank receives an offer for a promotion. Frank and April each face these new developments differently: April is willing to sacrifice everything so that she can live out her dream and they can move to Paris, but Frank starts to think more practically about what is best for the sake of the family. The conflict between the two is never resolved until one day, at the climatic point of the movie, April makes a decision that would change her family's future forever.
Revolutionary Road takes us on a journey of exploring human emotion. We can ride on the joy of renewed marital bliss, feel the pain of imagined betrayal, and see the efforts of each spouse trying to be good to the other yet being unable to reconcile the differences in hopes and aspirations between them. We are given the ominous question of how we might have resolved the situation had it been us in their shoes. What if we were to experience a similar situation in our lives? How then might we resolve our differences and find a way out of the trap that would eventually consume Frank and April's marriage and their lives?
As each Blessed Couple is challenged to create an ideal family of true love, it would be a worthy endeavor to take the time to think about how we could be better -- how we could use the vertical love and values nurtured in our movement in order to overcome difficulties in horizontal relationships, such as that between a husband and wife. Moreover, this movie is an example of why a couple should not and cannot be expected to take care of a family on its own. As True Father teaches, we are each to establish a three-generational family, in which God's true love can flow on many different levels. If we can overcome the challenges of true love which plague not only Blessed Families but all families, then we can surely become the family movement which can change the world.