Ah, marriage

There are those who will see "Revolutionary Road," the long-awaited reteaming of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, as some deeply troubling coda to their famed cine-love in the top-grossing movie of all time, "Titanic." In that film, the duo played two dreamers whose lives are dashed by a gargantuan iceberg. In "Revolutionary Road," they repeat as dreamers, of the 1950s variety, only this time their future is sabotaged by conformity, fear and the acrid taste of self-loathing. It's as if Jack and Rose ran off together but it didn't end happily ever after.

From the look on his face, it's clear that this reading of the film has occurred to director Sam Mendes. "I'm not going to say that, but you can!" he says with devilish glee. With a thatch of black curly hair and rounded features, Mendes is pointedly not going there. That's messing with cinematic history, our complicated feelings toward icons in their iconic performances, and sometimes a movie is just a movie, a universe unto itself.

"Revolutionary Road" has its meta-theme also in Mendes' life. At 43, this baby-faced, Cambridge-educated Englishman is fast becoming the poet laureate of American suburbia, first with "American Beauty," now with the 1950s edition, "Revolutionary Road," and soon with another film -- this time a comedy -- about marriage. "Away We Go," an original screenplay by author Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida, follows a young couple as they travel the country in search of the best place to raise their future child.

Yet, curled up in his chair in his Four Seasons hotel room, Mendes doesn't see the leitmotif of his work that way. "I don't think that I am obsessed with suburbia. But I definitely feel drawn to family dynamics and dynamics between parents and children and men and women. And that, you know, I find very fascinating and very fulfilling. And I don't have any axes to grind; I'm not on a crusade . . ." No unhappy traumas growing up to recycle, he says, though he notes he had a "complicated childhood" as the only son of divorced parents. In fact, he explains himself as "definitely obsessed by characters who are lost and are trying to find their way through life. Now to answer the obvious question: Are you a character who has lost his way? Well, maybe I am!"

Doesn't shy away