By Joel Johnson

At first blush, it may seem that there’s not much in common between Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and Sam Mendes’s Revolutionary Road. The Wrestler is about a professional wrestler (aka wrassler) facing the end of the line, and Revolutionary Road is about a young couple facing life in suburbia. What tie them together are two things—the sense of one’s own exceptionality and the anomie in the face of society’s failure to acknowledge that exceptionality. Anomie is defined by the MSN Encarta Dictionary as “a feeling of disorientation and alienation from society caused by the perceived absence of a supporting social or moral framework.”

This is probably much easier for the audience to grasp in watching entertainment bottom-dwellers such as Mickey Rourke’s titular wrestler and costar Marisa Tomei’s exotic dancer. Both present themselves before the public as stars—exceptions to the common man or woman. They receive and crave adulation. Their stardom is, however, based in deception. Each is dependent on audience acceptance, and they need to appear in ways that run counter to who they really are or what is actually happening or what they truly feel. Both need to be seen as young and attractive.

The middle-aged wrestler has to be perceived as muscular, powerful, and vigorously capable of engaging in all-out hand-to-hand combat. Instead, he needs steroids and human growth hormone just to keep up appearances and colludes with fellow wrestlers to put on a good show with a predetermined outcome. “The show” sometimes needs to be spiced up with bloodletting—sometimes surreptitiously self-inflicted and sometimes as part of a particularly nasty gimmick in another wrassler’s repertoire.

Tomei’s fortyish single mom must be beautiful, vivacious, sexy, and provocative enough to arouse desire in her strip-club’s patrons that may sometimes be young enough to be her sons. This raises the ante on her sex appeal as well as society’s dubious view of the morality of her career choice as a woman who not only cavorts almost nude before a roomful of men but also grants special attention of a sexual nature to individual customers. A transaction that approaches, but doesn’t quite reach, what would clearly be defined as prostitution.

Despite their seeking and finding the limelight in the ring and on the catwalk, both must live modestly—and for the wrestler on the edge of destitution. Both perform under aliases. The dancer Cassidy’s (Tomei) real name is Pam. The wrestler has reworked his real name of Robin Ramsky into Randy “The Ram” Robinson. It is Pam’s need to keep her real life and her work separate that leads in part to the tragic—if in its way noble—denouement of the film.

The other part that explains how the film turns out is the wrestler’s relationship with his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood). There has been a serious breach in this relationship that the young woman says has been stressed and frayed throughout her lifetime by an endless series of prolonged absences, late arrivals, no-shows, and other disappointments. While an entertainment career lends itself to self-involvement, and a professional wrestler lives a perpetually nomadic existence that includes stops in any community that can boast any kind of building large enough to accommodate a couple hundred fans and a wrestling ring, it soon becomes clear that Randy/Robin has a knack for being irresponsible and screwing up that goes beyond the pitfalls attributable to his career. It is only belatedly that he has placed any priority on his role as a parent. He has come to the realization that he knows very little of the young woman into which his little girl has grown. Because his daughter lives with another woman, Randy thinks she could be a lesbian. Can he learn who his daughter is and earn her acceptance?

Through the lives of these two people caught in the cross fire of society’s admiration and censure, Darren Aronofsky has created a film that looks at our need to be unique and special even if most of us don’t choose lives that expose ourselves to the public eye as vividly as Randy and Cassidy. The film also hits another very universal theme of how age—time itself—robs our bodies of abilities and the appearance of being the person we once were. How do we respond to that? While most of us don’t choose the route of the wrestler, we understand his choice.

Revolutionary Road focuses on what seems to be a much more conventional couple—Frank and April Wheeler—but neither the film’s trailer (providing a darkly one-note portrayal of the film’s central relationship that may have undermined both the film’s critical and box office success) nor its opening do anything to conceal that their relationship is in serious trouble. The Wheelers sputter and lash out at each other in a way that has the audience changing allegiance with each exchange. The film then moves back to the beginning of their relationship. Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a young World War II veteran who has served in Europe and has returned to his hometown of New York City, where he meets aspiring actress April (Kate Winslet) at a party. The film fast-forwards through their courtship, their wedding, and their lives as newlyweds. We see them next in the midst of making the purchase that will secure them their piece of the American dream—buying their home on Revolutionary Road.

The so-called “American dream” that still defines being middle class in America includes owning a home with spacious front and backyards in small closely knit neighborhoods. This dream emerged in the postwar era following World War II. People left the cities to find the homes and the neighborhoods swelling the small towns that ringed the major cities—what eventually came to be known as the suburbs. Surrounding New York City, the suburbs from which people commuted to work extended well into New Jersey and Connecticut. The daily drive and/or the train ride became something that everyone had to do. Though moving to the suburbs had become the fashionable thing to do, there is a flip side to the rush to suburbia that hovers over the film—perhaps most especially in the mind of April Wheeler—which is Levittown. To satisfy the desire of a tidal wave of would-be suburbanites to find a home, Abraham Levitt and his sons Alfred and William developed planned communities that mass-produced essentially the same house for everyone. Their communities officially bore the name Levittown, but there were soon other developers mass-producing single design neighborhoods.

To people who view themselves as particularly gifted, unique, and exceptional, residing in the same home as their neighbors and being yoked to everyone else in herdlike behavior make a paradoxical and horrendous fate of being admitted to what everyone else views as the Garden of Eden. Both the Wheelers chafe at the rhythm of their lives, but April especially finds life on Revolutionary Road stultifying as she is defined—as most American women in the 1950s were—as someone’s wife and someone’s mother. Her youthful dreams of becoming an actress have been set aside, and a role in an amateur theatrical production has done nothing to revive it. If anything, it has made it seem even more unattainable. Her life is defined by biology, which dictates that women conceive and bear children, and by the cultural norms linked to the governance of biology—that women take primary responsibility for nurturing and rearing their young. April is home alone for this. On the other hand, Frank finds recognition of his abilities and a social circle of peers in the workplace. While Frank may have never viewed himself as following in his father’s footsteps to work for the same company, he, ultimately, has no overarching vision of his own talent. April, bereft of her vision of her own uniqueness, is prepared to devote herself to underwriting Frank’s odyssey to discover his own special talent or—in the language of a later generation—to find himself. One can see this woman possibly becoming a stage mother to vicariously live her own dreams through her children.

This is a very remarkable film for its depiction of discontent within the domain of the American dream. In that the iconic lifestyle that first took shape in 1950s America has taken root across the world, this is a film that recognizes our universal human need to be unique while acknowledging how comforting just being part of the herd can be. The film—based on a 1961 novel by a male author—provides an almost prescient perspective on the profound inequality in the roles of men and women. The film also provides trenchant observations and gives us food for thought on the controversial subject of reproductive rights. It is for all these reasons that this film will likely grow in stature as time goes by.

Richard Yates wrote the novel Revolutionary Road. Justin Haythe adapted the book for the screen. I don’t know to whom a greater debt is owed for the dialogue that snaps off the screen and keeps our sympathies in flux. The two stars—reunited for the first time since their fortuitous pairing on Titanic—each deliver bravura performances. They are effectively supported by a talented ensemble. Michael Shannon stands out as a one-man Greek chorus, whose history of mental instability provides license to tell things exactly as he sees them. This role has garnered Shannon an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

While the two stars of Revolutionary Road managed to be overlooked for Oscar glory, The Wrestler managed to garner Oscar recognition for Mickey Rourke as best actor and Marisa Tomei for best supporting actress. Both have delivered well-modulated performances that are powerfully touching. Clearly, both benefited from the fine script provided by Robert D. Siegel.

Very different movies that each provide a perspective on the need for uniqueness and society’s ambivalence to expressions of that uniqueness, The Wrestler and Revolutionary Road are both high-quality films that deserve to be remembered long after the announcements of who receives whatever award is being handed out fades to silence.