American Beauty

Rating

Director

Sam Mendes

Screenplay

Alan Ball

Length

122 min.

Starring

Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher, Allison Janney, Scot Bakula, Sam Robards, Barry Del Sherman

MPAA Rating

R (For strong sexuality, language, violence and drug content)

Review

The typical male mid-life crisis takes a decidedly bizarre twist in Sam Mendes’ debut film American Beauty.

Leading a rather talented cast, Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham who has the perfect life. From the outside, everything looks normal and well adjusted. Inside, things couldn’t be worse. His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), loves her roses. She prunes and cares for them like she doesn’t her family. She’s absorbed in the world of real estate to the point of obsession and her family is often left behind because of it. Their daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is going through the awkward teenage years and takes the typical tack of disliking her father and rebelling against his and her mother’s rules.

The model of dysfunction, the Burnhams are thrust into turmoil when Lester begins lusting after Jane’s cheerleader friend Angela (Mena Suvari). He quits his job and begins working at a fast food restaurant, much to his wife’s chagrin. She finds comfort in the arms of rival realtor Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher) but vocally objects at one of their typically silent evening meals.

Meanwhile, Jane has become interested in the boy next door. Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) is an amateur filmmaker whose infatuation with a wind-tossed plastic shopping bag seems ludicrous, but on reflection is symbolic of the lives of the people in the film. Inert at the start of the picture, the various events in their lives blow them into new and unusual paths, each one divergent from the previous and all leading them to unexpected destinations. It’s the metaphor director Sam Mendes and screenwriter Alan Ball want you to find and you’re all to glad to accept it.

One of the most aggravating things about films like American Beauty is how fallacious they feel. While individual events in the film are completely believable, when bundled together in such an outlandish way, they almost become cartoonish. That doesn’t mean that the film is bad. On the contrary, it makes the film incredibly interesting. It’s a compact vehicle for an examination of a wide variety of personality traits.

What films like this need is an empathic connection for the audience. American Beauty does so in a number of ways and the foremost of which is through the film’s second least likely character. Carolyn is almost villainous in her approach to parenting and spousal duties. We dislike nearly everything she does. Throughout the film, we’re convinced that she couldn’t care less about her husband or daughter. We honestly believe she cares nothing for anything other than her precious roses and her realty career. Bening grants us these images with such flair and credibility that when she finally comes to the end of the picture, we realize how many nuanced clues she has left behind from the beginning. We cry for her character even though we thought we never would.

That Spacey’s character fails to earn the kind of empathy one might expect is a flaw in his performance. Some might find his ultimate conclusion heart wrenching, I was left feeling somewhat unconcerned and, had Bening not given us so much prior, we might not have even felt what we did. Instead, thanks to Bening, Spacey’s performance feels more helpful in that denouement than it really is.

Birch and Bentley are better than Spacey in their respective roles and help the film along immeasurably. Suvari wasn’t spectacular, nor even as good as Birch, but held her own opposite the more experienced Spacey. Chris Cooper rounds out the cast of central characters as the self-hating ex-marine Col. Frank Fitts, Ricky’s abusive, disciplinarian father. What could have amounted to a leering, vicious character the likes Jeremy Irons or John Malkovich would have created, becomes a conflicted character in Cooper’s hands. That our opinion of him softens slightly by the film’s end is a credit to his subtle work.

American Beauty for all its flaws is an accomplished film. The performances make the film far more than it might have been otherwise. Additionally, Mendes could have directed the film down an even more ludicrous and absurd path but restrains it just enough to keep the audience engaged and accepting of its themes.

Though many other films have tackled this kind of subject matter better, namely Ang Lee’s exceptional The Ice Storm, American Beauty is still an enlightening experience.

Review Written

January 2, 2007

Original Review

Note: This is a Resurfaced review written in 2002 or earlier. For more information, please visit this link: Resurfaced Reviews.

No matter how you look at it, life is all you make it out to be. That’s a lesson that a middle-aged magazine writer must learn before he can survive his miserable existence.

Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, the disgruntled writer for a computer magazine. Lester has spent most of his life being put on by his family. His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), is a real estate saleswoman who has trouble selling her wares. Their daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is a disgruntled teenage cheerleader with very few friends who wants to have her parents pay attention to her and care about what she does.

One evening, Lester and his wife attend a basketball game where Jane is cheering. There, Lester sees Jane’s friend Angela (Mena Suvari) for the first time. He instantly falls into lust over her and spends a great amount of time fantasizing about her.

He later overhears Angela telling Jane that her father would be “doable” if he just had muscles. Lester immediately takes that to heart and starts improving his body. The issue is complicated further during a real estate party for Carolyn when Lester meets the new neighbor’s kid, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley). They take a trip out to the alley behind and talk about movies while smoking dope. Ricky’s dim, yet refreshing view on life inspires Lester to improve himself.

“American Beauty” opens with a narrated introduction by Lester, who happens to be dead and we are told that by the end of the film that he would be killed. Endings have been heightened and ruined by giving the audience knowledge of a film’s end. This is an instance where it’s interesting how it happens, but knowing in advance is annoying.

The chief metaphorical image in the film is the red rose, a beautiful and fragrant plant with sharp and dangerous thorns. An American Beauty is a type of rose. Carolyn is a gardener and her fence-side garden is filled with them, as is the house. What is most interesting about the metaphor is its ability to apply to many different situations within the film.

The first is the most common, describing life as a rose with its beauty and its thorns. Second is Lester’s lust for young Angela. She is pretty, but because of her age and Lester’s marital status, she is off limits. One could also see her as prickly.

However, the metaphor that carries the most resonance is comparing Lester and his life as a rose. He begins the film as a rosebud. A tiny, insignificant flower with soft, innocuous thorns and treasure trapped inside. Ricky is like the gardener who coaxes the young bud to open itself up to the world and become strong. By the end of the film, Lester has blossomed and his thorns have become as prickly as the thorns of the people around him.

Spacey delivers an Oscar-caliber performance. He guides the depressed, drab Lester through his metamorphosis with ease. The narration is annoying and unnecessary for the most part, but doesn’t distract as much as it could have.

Bening is similarly fantastic. She gives her character, which could have easily been transparent and flat, a three-dimensionality that other actresses might have avoided. She was aided immensely by a well-written script, but her talent as an actress helped perfect it.

Birch gives a good performance, as does Suvari. However, the big surprise is the up-and-coming Bentley who gives the strange next door neighbor a vibrant life. If he can hold out through the rest of the Oscar bait, he could be a prime contender for a supporting actor nomination alongside Spacey’s almost-assured actor nomination and Bening’s potential actress nod.

The only technical aspect truly worth mentioning is Conrad L. Hall’s masterful cinematography. Destined for another Oscar nomination, Hall captured the mood with style, grace and beauty, tempered by the dangerousness of each of the film’s situations.

“American Beauty” is one of the few films this year that has been able to step through the mediocrity at the cineplex and capture the attention of the American audience while still conveying a deeper meaning that seems to be lacking in cinema today.

“Beauty” is not a film to be missed by most adults, but is inappropriate for younger ears and eyes. Audiences should leave the theater feeling saddened, but in a deeper sense uplifted that a man could live his life to the fullest before being rudely interrupted.

Awards Prospects

American Beauty has what it takes to be a big Oscar contender. Picture, Actor – Spacey, Actress – Bening, Sup. Actor – Bentley, Director, Original Screenplay, Editing and Cinematography are all good bets. Art Direction and Original Score are also potentialities. Unless Jim Carrey can do better in “Man on the Moon,” Spacey is pretty much guaranteed a win. Cinematography also has a good shot at a win.

Review Written
October 11, 1999