Powerfully real.

Rating: 9/10 (29 August 2000)

"American Beauty " is not a movie. It's a film. It is literature in picture form. It is a documentation of a point in the progression of our society. This film is a perfect snapshot of dysfunctional suburbia in the year 1999. (I will admit, Lester black-mailing his boss is not the most realistic thing that's ever happened in a film, but it fits the story if you understand why he's doing it.) It is a modernization of Marxist-style alienation. It is anti-materialism. It is anti-conformity. It's not a movie based on historical lies like "Gone With the Wind." It's not a movie based on feeling good, like "Forrest Gump." It's not a movie based on pseudo-mythology, like "Star Wars." (All of those were excellent films, but ultra-unrealistic.) "American Beauty" is based on the dark side of your own friends and neighbors. The characters in it are not good people. They don't "save the day" in the end. They live trapped in a prison of their own making. They spend most of the time making each other miserable. To say that "American Beauty" is depressing misses the point. The film works because it is emotionally powerful. The only moral is that life is short, and to be grateful that you're alive.