AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999)

Director: Sam Mendes

Writer: Alan Ball

Producers: Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher, Allison Janney, Scott Bakula, Sam Robards, Barry Del Sherman, Amber Smith, Brenda Wehle, Lisa Cloud, Marisa Jaret Winokur, Dennis Anderson, Joel McCrary, Matthew Kimbrough 

42-year-old Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) has been employed ad writing at a magazine for the past 14 years. He is stuck in a joyless, middle class, suburban lifestyle with his career-obsessed, real-estate-agent wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), and his emotionally distant, teenaged daughter, Jane (Thora Birch). When Lester meets his daughter’s beautiful, blonde classmate, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), Lester is smitten and has a midlife awakening. He has ongoing fantasies about young Angela and shirks his adult responsibilities. Lester’s new attitude exacerbates the dysfunction in the Burnham household. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

So, this lover of the lowbrow is reviewing a film that won five Oscars including Best Picture? “Where the hell are my standards?” you scream. Well, it is a pretty old film by now and still an odd one after a quarter century. Er—and uh—well, it’s also kind of transgressive. That’s gotta count for something, right? And—uh—it’s just a great film, dammit! But fear not, for I shan’t start sipping tea with my pinky finger extended while I extol the virtues of prestigious cinema. Trust me. I shall soon resume reviewing my regularly scheduled selection of significant schlock. American Beauty has reinforced my value of being true to oneself. 

I remember first seeing American Beauty in the theater way back in 1999 and really enjoying it. It capped off a decade of indie films that were a relief from Hollywood blockbusteritus. The quirky and personal films getting noticed were welcome alternatives to franchises, generic action hero product, and evermore-bloated “high concept” effects shows trying to engage the video game crowd. While American Beauty, with its $15-million budget on a DreamWorks Pictures production and distribution deal, was hardly down-and-dirty, guerilla filmmaking, it was still made in the indie spirit by refusing to fit neatly into an easily marketed genre. The time was still ripe for another eccentric, challenging, and heartfelt movie. 

The moral in this film may seem obvious: Achieving status and maintaining a lifestyle does not always lead to happiness. However, that is a message that could not be shouted loud enough in the go-go ’90s. Much of America’s so-called freedom has always been about working hard to conform to the routines that will make the money needed to create an image that makes us feel worthy. Always striving to pass the judgment of others to feel accepted and admired is a trap. 

The central event in the story is the midlife crisis suffered by Kevin Spacey’s character. His Lester Burnham does his unfulfilling job for management that he has no respect for. His career is just a means to help provide for a family he feels disconnected from. His sudden infatuation with his daughter’s friend knocks Lester out of his midlife malaise. He is not yet so old that he can’t change, but time’s a-wastin.’ 

 

Lester begins to rebel by not giving a shit about going through the establishment motions in his life anymore. Now he can tell people exactly what he means and confront their own insincere behavior. I practically stand up and cheer when Lester quits his job while coercing his manager into giving him a decent severance package. Damn, this guy’s a slacker superhero! Then he immediately finds the least demanding job he can think of: flipping burgers like he did back in high school. We are soon treated to the ongoing fallout from this development at the family dinner table where Lester demonstrates that the domestic worm has turned. 

That will-they-or-won’t-they moment between Kevin Spacey’s middle-aged Lester and young Mena Suvari’s Angela really got to me. Everything is perfect: performance, pacing, and lighting complimented by the wonderful source music of Annie Lennox covering Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” playing on the stereo. Helluva scene. It’s one last gasp of real movie magic before the following century’s cinema would pander to an attention-span-challenged audience with relentless shaky cam, quick cuts, and digital tweaking for practically every goddamn frame of “film.” 

That narration of Kevin Spacey’s character opening the film by letting us know he is already dead is novel, though not original. As director Sam Mendes himself acknowledges, Sunset Boulevard (1950) also began its dystopian look at the Hollywood lifestyle with narration from a dead character. It makes some satirical sense to use that same technique here in a picture about a different dystopian dead end located in American suburbia. It also imparts a bit of tension underlying the whole film leading to the protagonist’s death. 

All of the main adult characters in American Beauty begin this story locked into identities that keep them from being happy and true to themselves. Their issues result from a lack of self-esteem. Jane’s fellow cheerleader, Angela, is also well on her way to falling into the same adult trap of affecting an image and reputation that she thinks will make her better than ordinary. 

 

The two characters that clearly view their world and those around them are teenagers Jane Burnham and her next-door neighbor and classmate, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley). They have their own issues due to the dysfunction of their families. Probably as a result of no emotional bonding and reassurance from her parents, Jane is dealing with her own sense of inadequacy as she is already saving her money for a “boob job.” The voyeuristic Ricky uses his video camera to capture the beauty that only he perceives in the real world. Ricky seems almost ethereal in his remote calm that has resulted from the emotional disconnect he has developed coping in the rigidly disciplined household commanded by his ex-Marine father, Col. Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper). 

All of this seems to be adding up to a dismal kitchen sink drama that can spill over into preachy moralizing. That is hardly the case here. Lester Burnham’s midlife rebirth exposes this film’s truths in amusing ways. It never devolves into a lifestyle farce, but it does create moments that are funny for being recklessly liberating. 

Of course Kevin Spacey won the Best Actor Oscar for a performance here that works because most of the time he seems subdued. His Lester Burnham character is established as repressed and seething with resentment about his life and family. Once he has his midlife attitude conversion, he indulges himself with youthful abandon and rejects any status-dictated responsibilities. However, there are still unresolved dissatisfactions in his home life that can break through that don’t-give-a-damn calm. It is the direction, writing, and cinematography that does the stylish heavy lifting while Spacey’s mundane sincerity rings true. 

There are many other fine performances. Annette Bening’s manic Carolyn becomes almost grotesque in her career-fixated fundamentalism. Thora Birch’s Jane goes beyond sadness to disaffection in her character’s lack of self-esteem. Birch would go on to star in my favorite film of the next century, that quirky delight Ghost World (2001). Wes Bentley exudes a calm confidence as Ricky Pitts that is as much of an influence on Lester’s new attitude as the Angela fixation. Chris Cooper’s intense performance as Ricky’s hard-ass, control-freak father gives us a character that is both despicable and pathetic. Finally, Mena Suvari’s vain and shallow Angela is funny, yet she surprises us with her vulnerability. 

American Beauty skewers the middleclass mainstream’s empty vanity. It does this all in a darkly humorous manner that can be quirky, distressing, and cathartic. It all ends by challenging us to accept a philosophy embracing truth and appreciating life experience rather than lamenting lost goals.

 

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