One of the Best Films of 1999.

Rating: Null/10 (9 July 2002)

The first time I saw the now famous poster for American Beauty was months before it opened. I was going down the escalator of a posh local multiplex, and there it was at the end of my descent. I looked at those red roses adorning an actresses midsection, and I remarked to a friend that this looked like a very special movie. I don't what it was about the artwork that made me say that, but it turned out to be an accurate remark. The movie opened in a limited engagement in September 1999 and went on to build and build. In March, it won Oscars in major categories - Best Picture, Best Actor [Kevin Spacey] and Best Director. At the time, there were some nay-sayers who said the film painted too dark a picture of American life. I won't debate this, but I will say that there are precedents in the Academy Awards. For example, Billy Wilder's The Apartment, a scathing comedy about how morally low some people will go to move up in corporate life, won Best Picture in 1961. Brilliant is brilliant, no matter what the subject is, and America has had a seriously cynical side to it for decades.
Welcome to the Burnham household. Meet Lester and Carolyn [Spacey and Annette Bening] and their lovely teenage daughter, Jane [Thora Birch]. The Burnhams have it all - the lucrative jobs, the topflight public schools, the perfect suburban home, the immaculate lawn with its borders of American beauty roses. What could possibly be missing from their lives? Oh, just little things like happiness and fulfillment. Lester and Carolyn certainly no longer love each other. Theirs is an uneasy truce. On the surface, Jane comes across as a snide and ungrateful child, but you have to ask yourself who wouldn't be eager to leave such a dismal scene? How often many of us point the finger at our children when what we are showing them are lives devoid of love, passion, honestly and integrity.
Jane is a cheerleader at the local high school, and one night the Burnhams decide to attend a game. They want to show support for their daughter, who truly doesn't want them there. Lester sees another cheerleader, a friend of Jane's, and instantly falls in lust. He becomes obsessed with the girl. He quits his job and blackmails his boss into giving him $60,000 severance pay. He buys a red Pontiac Firebird. Carolyn, who constantly berates herself for not being a success, retaliates by starting an affair with an arch rival in the real estate business. Their actions are not exactly what they appear to be. Lester's pursuit isn't all about an older man / young girl relationships. Its about the loss of youth and passion and about the dire consequences that can be spawned by living a whole lifetime of fitting in. Carolyn feels she has totally lost controlnot just of Lester and Jane, but of life as a whole. I think they are after the same answers, only Lester uses a brutally honest approach. And now Jane is really ready to split.

Compounding all these problems is the arrival of some strange new neighbors. Col. Frank Fitts is a retired Marine who's feelings are so repressed he's become a walking time bomb. His wife has retreated into a haunting, silent world of her own. Teenage son Ricky is obsessed with videotaping everything he encounters, including Jane. He supports his hobby by dealing vast quantities of dope. Soon Jane and Ricky have a thing going, and everything climaxes for all involved in one bizarre night of the most memorable and improabable miscommunications.
Is this a comedy or a drama? That's hard to say. Many viewers do not relate to the Burnhams specific problems, but they do identify with their general feelings. In laughing at them, many of us are laughing at ourselves. Take the problem of trying too hard to fit in. There is nothing wrong with doing this, unless you lose your own identity in the process. And many would agree that, while there is nothing fundamentally wrong with being American, there is currently something fundamentally wrong with American life. Personally, I think it has less to do with moral issues than it does with a basic spiritual emptiness that comes with being obsessed with external appearances and with material goods.
American Beauty is a brilliant movie and, to me, probably was the best American film of 1999. Like a few others before it, it stands uniquely on its own, owing very little to movies that came before it. I love the way it peels away the layers of the Burnhams' lives like onions. I admire its essentially nonjudgmental point of view. Best of all, I like the way that everyone is somehow redeemed at the end. Its a movie that makes you wish there were a few more great ones like it out there.