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LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) |
Mendes’ revelation roadtrip is loveable
AWAY WE GO
Directed by Sam Mendes
Certificate 15
THIS is Sam Mendes at his gentle best, and a departure from the films that made his name.
In American Beauty, we watched a middle-aged man stagger through a personal crisis, and be murdered at the end by a crazy neighbour.
In Revolutionary Road, Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio are the supposedly perfect couple whose lives are secretly awful. It is another Mendes film that sees one of the lead
characters die tragically at the end. Grim stuff.
It makes Away We Go even more surprising, for it is soppy, light-hearted and simply smiley.
Mendes has revealed it was partly the sad story of Revolutionary Road that prompted him to find a spirit-lifter.
“I was in the middle of making another light comedy – Revoluntionary Road – when I found this script,” he joked as he presented a special preview showing of the film at the Tricycle Cinema in Kilburn on Monday night.
“Revolutionary Road was a tough gig. It was like living under a dark cloud for two years.
Suddenly, this script turned up by Dave Eggers.
“It is the exact opposite of Revolutionary Road. It is full of hope, joy, expectation and fear – all those things you feel when you have your first child.”
Mendes was also taken by the fact this is a romantic comedy like no other he had ever read.
“Instead of creating this couple, where boy meets girl, then there is a crisis of some sort in the second act, and then later the boy goes running after the girl in the rain to seal the relationship, they are just in love all the way through, and I found that very original,” he states.
And this is no run-of-the-mill rom-com, and what first makes it stand out is the fact the two leading characters are just so endearing. They are the type of friends you’d happily have.
In Richard Curtis-style rom-coms, everything is just so, everything is
perfect, his characters all have amazing jobs, hair, teeth, and a nauseating Tory-tweeness about them. You find yourself hoping they don’t fall in love and everything else in their life goes wrong, too.
Away We Go is
different. Mendes has created two believable characters: they are pretty normal, nicely average, and because of this you see something in them that is easy to relate to – it paradoxically makes them extremely special. The two main leads – Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski – provide an emotional attachment. Essentially, whilst
laughing with them at the japes and scrapes they encounter as they trek across America looking for a place to settle down, you begin to care about them and hope that things will work out okay.
And there are some great supporting roles. Jeff Bridges is hilarious as Burt’s father, while perhaps the most knockout character is LN, a childhood friend, played by the ever-watchable Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is given a juicy role, that of a New Age wannabe feminist lecturer (she is far too stupid to be such a thing) with some great lines and wacky ideas, and she makes the most of it. An example: she doesn’t want to put her children in a pushchair, because it’s emotionally damaging as it tells your children that you are “pushing them away”. She rattles through a painfully funny skit about having sex in front of your kids to show what a loving family they come from.
This is Mendes at his best – heartfelt, original and romantic. I got broody watching this, and a better advert for the joys of falling in love and having children you could not wish to find. |
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