Have not seen Revolutionary Road, but I know how out of period stuff can make it harder to get into a movie or show, you keep bumping into things that are not supposed to be there and it jars you out of the moment.
One of our sons loaned us his first season DVDs of Madmen, thinking that with our fondness for the post war era we'd enjoy the show. Well, we didn't. For me, I just kept bumping into the inaccurate historical sets, props, ideas, and attitudes. For example, in the pilot set in 1960 a women introduces a new secretary to her desk and all it's fancy high tech gear, a rotary 500 and an electric typewriter. The typewriter is an IBM Selectric I, not introduced until the next year, and the 500 had a clear plastic fingerwheel and what looked like a modular cord.
Now a lot of people might say that I'm being a pick, that who cares if the materials used are not exact to the year, it's the basic thought that counts and I need to relax and just enjoy the picture. Shows like Madmen are not really about being exact anyway, they might say, it's just about getting some of the feel of the era.
But still, if I'm watching a show set in 1960 I expect the makers to have tried to at least get the material history right, and if they are blowing the material history then what about the rest? Is this really a picture about the past, or just a picture about how we think about the past?
When I do Civil War Reenacting some of the stuff done by other reenactors in their kits is annoying. I recall one time noticing that the fellow in front of me had a spun aluminum canteen, Swedish I believe, and circa the 1970s. Another fellow once had a plastic canteen with a Mexican wool blanket cover and a nylon strap, probably bought it at Wal-Mart. There is one fellow who portrays a Confederate Cav man from Virginia and he carries a Henry rifle.
Like seeing Kate Winslet crying while talking on a modular G14 handset in your clip from Revolutionary Road, it ruins the moment for me. I think, if we can't be bothered to get the phone/canteen/rifle/whatever it is right, then what else is wrong and why bother? What the heck, let's just have Confederate soldiers with M-1 Garands, and put Kate on an iPhone with a rotary dial app.