THE FACES OF AMERICAN CINEMA

Gap between counter-cultural object-free desire and cultural wish directed towards an object: Revolutionary Road

The essay analyzes Sam Mendes' film Revolutionary Road, focusing on the main characters of Frank and April Wheeler. Analyzing in the first place the Age of Anxiety which is followed by the countercultural revolution, it interprets the lives of the protagonists as deeply marked by the paradoxes of the age. Further on, the difference between them is being established as the difference between the psychoanalytic wish, as directed towards an object, and psychoanalytic desire, which is object-free. Therefore, a difference between the reformist position of Frank and the radical position of April bears similarities to the future radical countercultural movement of the next decade.

Željka Matijašević