Take note, this may be us...

Rating: Null/10 (13 June 2012)

In the film American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes we are treated to a feast of pietistic crow. It is not an accident that the 1990's should end with a film such as American Beauty any more than the 1980's ended with the War of the Roses by Danny DeVito. While conveying the same happily married couple coming of age theme, the former draws on the brighter side of darkness, while the later does the opposite. The 1980's celebrating the excesses of life while the 1990's celebrated, if not the simplicities, at least a faith in romance life might bring. American Beauty opens with Lester Burhnam, played by Kevin Spacey, giving a voice-over narration of the any man's life, on any man's street, in any man's house. We quickly learn that like so many of his brethren, Lester is bored, unhappy, and uninterested in his work, his family, his life. Predictably, none of his society is much interested in him either. His wife Carolyn, played by Annette Bening, is bitterly unhappy too, but unaware of this fact. Their daughter Jane, played by Thora Birch, is just another unhappily and unaware teenager. Unlike so many of us, Lester actually try's to change his life. While his daughter and wife unwittingly change around him, he consciously makes the attempt. To his complete amazement, and ours too, it works out. In an appropriate early scene we watch the unhappy couple approach Carolyn's real-estate idol Buddy Kane played by Peter Gallagher. The camera appears perched above Kane's head as the couple approaches as if they are paying homage to their better. We later note the transition as we watch Lester, working out regularly now, pose naked and unashamed in his garage. Lester's obsession with the teenage girl Angela played by Mina Suvari, is flaunted as the central point of the film. However, to believe his grasping at fading youth is nothing more than a Lolithian fantasy, is to miss the growth he, or any man might still achieve with what is left of life. Lester does grow, and in his final scene with Angela we witness just how much. But like the film, life is often very painful and difficult to watch. Carolyn's sycophantic homage at a lunch with Kane is far more painful to watch than her later indiscretions. Spacey's deadpan delivery of Lester's resignation at work would be hilarious or horrifying, if not so surreal and convincing. Lester is believable, not because he is so singular but because he is so familiar, as is every person on his quiet little street. In stereotyping life in the suburbs at the end of a century, American Beauty manages to defy caricature. We want Lester to succeed in his quest for relevance even as we know the anguish it brings to the world around him. He is the man who does what we should expect any sane 42 year old man do. He does what we all long to do. But we will not, and we know we will not. We will choose not to grow not only because it will hurt those around us, but because even as we relate to every circumstance in Lester's life, we still envision ourselves better than him. We will get through life without the pain, and without the guilt and still claim relevance in the end. Watch this film, and then decide for yourself.