Babbitts Everywhere

Rating: Null/10 (9 March 2003)

Midlife crisis: it's something we've come to expect from middle-aged men. And we've all seen the stereotypical manifestations: a `normal' guy goes out and buys a Harley, or has an affair, or just becomes a royal jackass around the house - more so than usual, that is. It's so damned clichÃ©.
American Beauty transcends the plethora of hackneyed truisms about midlife crisis for one reason: it deals with the social and cultural forces that produce it, and not just the dramatic changes that come midway through life, changes that Jung insisted are inevitable. The difference between American Beauty's Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) and Married with Children's Al Bundy is the difference between Dante's middle aged man who, awakened, enters a deep, `dark wood,' the creative and spiritual side of life (not without it's perils!), and Sinclair Lewis's `Babbitt,' who boasted that he had never done anything he wanted to do. It's the difference between following one's bliss, and stashing one's life on a shelf until the balance of years expires. It's brilliant because when Lester Burnham, who used to be a Babbitt, reforms his Babbitt-like ways, he pisses off all the other Babbitts, especially his wife and next door neighbors, the `Fitts.' With Babbitts everywhere to be found, it's not a wonder that a midlife crisis is necessary. It is a wonder that anyone succeeds in finding the dark wood, and not an ersatz experience, like the herds of men with leather jackets and Harleys.
What's more, the conflict between Lester Burnham and everyone else is not only pithy social satire, it's outrageously comical. Anette Bening is simply brilliant as Lester's wife, who is anal, materialistic, and completely fanatical about financial success. (She was robbed of the Academy Award in 1999, I think.) Her daughter's phony friend spots her immediately as a phony (takes one to know one), as she effuses fake good cheer and beneficence. I've worked with people like that. Let me tell you, they can kill your spirit. They can make you sick.
If you haven't seen it, rent it.