Best Hollywood film of the decade

Rating: 9/10 (28 December 1999)

Arguably one of the finest dramas to come out of a major studio since modern cinema's heyday in the 70's, "American Beauty" owes much of its style to a longlasting independent tradition - it's a veritable marriage of Todd Solondz's bitter, detached commentary in the guise of a sitcom-like comedy of errors, and David Lynch's subversive, dark visual poetry, rich in dreams and hidden meanings. And what a glorious marriage this is! Pure irony is juxtaposed with pure tragedy here in a fashion both funny and painful, since the first-time director and a noted stage veteran Sam Mendes permits the audience to actually get to know his characters well (something that most 90's filmmakers, Mike Leigh aside, never bother to do). Essentially, Kevin Spacey's post-mortem recounting of a crisis in two very different disfunctional suburban families, the film speaks volumes of about the trouble with the current American attitudes and social behaviors with surprising eloquence and complexity. Unlike its cynical predecessors who often just throw the wreckage upon us and then leave it be, "American Beauty" does offer alternatives to the widespread pursuit of happiness through financial success (meditation and aesthetic awareness ), all the while without succumbing to blatant, didactic posturing. No simple solution is offered, however: even the characters who manage to bring themselves closer to the noncoformist, more desirable state of being, achieve it through questionable methods. As close to perfection as the picture may be, a few inevitable flaws do creep in (a predictable, Hollywood score; a few cases of overstatement, when the plot carries itself a tad bit further then credibility would allow), yet none inflict enough damage to lessen the overall effect of this superior work that should serve as a wake-up call to a nation of self-deluding automatons.