Review: American Beauty
Forty-two-year old Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) masturbates in the shower. "This will be the high point of my day," he voiceovers. He's not kidding. He would seem to have everything -- the beautiful wife and daughter, a great job, even a house with a white picket fence. But look closer -- he's on the verge of being fired, his formerly happy wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) has become a frigid bitch and his daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is distant, angry and confused.
Lester shares that he will be dead in one year but, really, he's already been dead for a better part of his life. Suddenly, enter Angela (Mena Suvari), Jane's self-centered friend and fellow cheerleader who captures Lester's gaze and confirms Jane's most embarrassing fear. "I need a father who's a role model," not some horny old guy who'll go after every friend she brings home. Not that Angela's innocent herself. Lester may fantasize about seeing her naked in a field of rose petals on his ceiling, but Angela knows she's got the power to turn him inside out and isn't afraid to use it. One throwaway comment from her and suddenly Lester is pumping iron and has renewed his lust for life.
Jane, meanwhile, has become spellbound with her new next door neighbor Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), who trains both a video camera and his own unwavering gaze on her. Ricky plays the good son for his militant, homophobic father (Chris Cooper), whose wife (Allison Janney) exists in a waking coma. Yet Ricky knows how to neutralize his dad's unreasonable acts (mandatory drug testing every six months) and render him impotent in the parenting department. However, not even Ricky can prevent the tragedy that will envelop his family, Jane's family and Angela, the American Beauty who starts it all.
But look closer. . .for everything is not as it seems. Mistaken identities abound, sexual and otherwise. The title itself could cover both Angela and Jane, two versions of American beauty, and certainly the constant appearance of red roses, which are both a symbol of beauty and a harbinger of death. The Burnhams' house may be filled with pictures of the perfect family but dysfunction seethes underneath. Neither the eye nor the videotape can be trusted. Ricky's videos, black and white be they may, are quite subject to misinterpretation as his father ultimately and fatally proves. Ricky may be the closest to objectivity but even he is working with a third eye.
American Beauty will no doubt be compared to The Ice Storm -- both films deal with the increasing chasm between parents and children, between husbands and wives, between what is expected and what is actually achieved, the distance from one another, and the distance from our own lives. American Beauty's treatment of such issues is more scathing and hotblooded than The Ice Storm's chilled meditation. What's interesting is how neither family can deal with their seemingly perfect lives. Serrated with comfort, here is an Eden brought down not by a predatory curiosity but an untrusted satisfaction.
If my praise escalates into heights of apoplexy, it is because American Beauty is a perfect example of how talent and material can collide to create a felicitous communion of perfection. Director Sam Mendes, highly hailed on Broadway for his helming of Cabaret and The Blue Room, delivers an assured, auspicious debut. The film is touched with delightful visual flights of fancy: Angela opening her blouse to reveal red rose petals showering out. The ensemble is all sinew and muscle; no fat here, just the core every second, every minute.
To watch the principal cast -- and I exclude Suvari from this group though she displays a promising versatility and an offbeat kittenish quality -- is to watch two actors at their peak and two at the beginnings of brilliance. Spacey, known for his sublimely reptilian villains, transforms Lester from an atrophied dead ender to a suave and silky figure of such can't-lose assurance that even a confidence man would be put to shame.
Bening is just as dynamic as the status-driven Carolyn. One scene alone should garner her a nomination: having unsuccessfully tried to sell a house, Carolyn closes the blinds and breaks down. As if her cracked facade of cutting cheer hasn't shocked you enough, what happens next will gut you out. Suddenly and quite forcefully, Carolyn literally smacks herself into composure -- "Shut up! Stop it, you baby!" Like Spacey, Bening uses her delicious enunciation to coat each word with its appropriate tone, whether it be venom or saccharine. Note the enforced breeze in her backhanded compliment to Jane after the cheerleading routine: "I watched you very closely, you didn't screw up once." Or the utter cluelessness with which she asks, "Me?"
Birch had already proven herself a talent in Paradise, filmed when she was all of seven years old. Her performance here, along with the upcoming Anywhere But Here, should set her apart from her otherwise indiscernible peers. The greatest discovery though is the superb Wes Bentley, previously seen in Beloved. It is his gaze which enthralls, his presence that captivates. His demeanor and that head-on stare attracts, disarms and unsettles. It is his disembodied voice that asks Birch's Jane if she wants him to kill her father. When we finally see him ask the question during the reprise of the scene, you know he's capable of anything. Even Jane isn't so sure that he's laughed it off as she has.
Despite the morbidity and pitch black humor, American Beauty is a reaffirming film. It urges people to communicate, to love, to not let a moment go unnoticed, to see the beauty in the most ordinary of things. "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world. I feel like I can't take it and my heart is just going to cave in." It is a sentiment expressed by both Ricky and Lester. It is a sentiment that asks us all to look closer.
American Beauty
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Written by: Alan Ball
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher, Allison Janney
