Immaculate

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2004)

The director of "American Beauty" has produced a scathing critique of alienation-filled societies: those that deify definitions of "success" so as to better ensure conformity, and their almost inevitable byproducts in despair and emptiness. The portrait of an American middle-class family allows the audience to see many of the most intimate human relations as diseased from the inside, though "beautiful" on the exterior; perfect for consumption, though dehumanized and ultimately hollow.
This film's depiction of alienation and fear recalls another by Gary Walkow (from 1995), entitled "Notes from Underground". This film is based on the Dostoevsky novel, though updated to fit late 20th century Los Angeles, bringing the very same themes and conflicts as existed in Dostoevsky's day to postmodern consciousness. This film is remarkably brilliant; Walkow's Underground Man (acted beautifully by Henry Czerny) reminds one of Lester Burnham in his bitter (and unsuccessful)rebellion from expectations and norms, and his eventual realization of the futility of such an escapade. The Underground Man's perception of others, at once spiteful and envious, taints his self-perception. Whereas Burnham comes to the somewhat "Dostoevsky-esque" conclusion that the dehumanization required to rebel from imposed constructs, itself, indicates failure. The Underground Man, likewise, is aware of this, though convinced of his inability to change. The final scene in "American Beauty" is, perhaps, a response.
Both films are brilliant, and deserving of 10 stars each.