Bringing Life To The Silver-Screen. "American Beauty" Skilfully Succeeds As A Film Almost Anyone Can Relate To

Rating: 8/10 (10 June 2007)

Winner of Best Picture in 1999, American Beauty is perfection in the form of the lives we lead. Built with precision, accuracy, honesty and beauty there is no denying the film's naturalistic nature in depicting life, and how so many people lead their lives by consumerism, materialism and denunciation. Not only has American Beauty gained huge popularity around the world, but it has also benefited from large amounts of critical acclaim. American Beauty is a film which should be mentioned alongside the greatest debuts in cinema, as the director Sam Mendes was a British stage-director who gained the opportunity to bring to life, what is ultimately a personification of today's world.
Meet Lester Burnham (performed by Kevin Spacey), a man just like so many others, a man who has been distanced by society and has become inconsequentially shunted to one side. His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening) and daughter Jane (Thora Birch) are also having their own fair share of personal dilemmas and are struggling to cope with the insignificance of their lives. Lester decides that drastic action needs to turn his mundane mid-life around, so he takes a form of "resurrection" by living his life in the way he wants to live it and accomplishing the freedom most men dream of. Instantly recognisable and indisputably distinctive, American Beauty taps inside the average person's day-to-day mendacity and portrays suburbia in all its heartless, yet beautifully oblivious glory.
There are times in everyone's lives where you just want to break free. Which is what American Beauty is primarily about; how we all want to be spontaneously alive and not let others manipulate our actions, but instead become driven by personal compulsion. Having the desire to become an individual is what makes us human, which is one of the reasons why American Beauty has become "the people's film". Driven by its audacious energy and satirical humour the film blends and distinguishes what makes us human.
Framed in a technique which subconsciously approaches beauty through heartache, American Beauty quietly compels its viewer inside a world which is remarkably familiar. Built on Alan Ball's (writer of the television series Six Feet Under) lyrical script the film becomes both brutally honest and poetically surreal. The script is paced in a way which helps the film shift with graceful timing, letting the performers delve inside their multi-dimensional characters. Packed with sarcastic wit, brutal sincerity and a tender edge, Alan Ball crafts the script with fantastic ease, letting everything flow with a delicate, yet sharply dry rhythm. The ability to craft American Beauty as an epic study of life through fantastically entertaining storytelling is something I admire.
The fluid editing and brilliantly controlled narrative crafts the film with a refined periphery. The use of jump-cuts, stylistic moulding and atmospheric lighting all help to make the film a pure joy to watch. Then you have the incredible cinematography, which blends fantasy and realism with an elusive ease. The gentle cinematography is, quite literally, beautiful, with its fluid motions and glossing visual deception. Also, the use of lens differentiation, wide lens takes and long takes highlight the characters' emotions; with the addition of the lighting everything feels so special. I adore the use of metaphorical imagery, such as the reoccurring bars to represent Lester being "caged" in a fake environment. Plus, there is a remarkably haunting image of characters being reflected through mirrors, which is one of the important themes of American Beauty. All this is played against Thomas Newman's majestic and unforgettable score, which subconsciously buries itself inside the back of the viewer's mind.
I find it extraordinary just how every single actor and actress adopts all the mannerisms, enabling the ability to construct complex characters. From facial expressions to hand movements, every action can be felt. Kevin Spacey embodies the role of Lester Burnham with concise relativity and bitter openness, becoming the everyday man living a fragile existence. Kevin Spacey also proves his brilliance through even the subtlest elements, such as the poignant voice-over he gives at both the beginning and end of the film. Annette Bening also gives a glaringly accurate portrayal of a self-absorbed woman who has been turned into a "bitch" by the desire to fit in with society's stereotypes. Even the young performers give some of the most memorably true-to-form performances I have had the pleasure of viewing. Desperation and loss has rarely been dealt with such a harsh amount emotional realism. Even when the film is bursting with entertainment and wit, there is always an underlying tone of sadness.
What American Beauty says is not exactly happy, but it is unbearably honest, being that we are all victimised (in some form) by the society we live in. Yet, American Beauty is outstandingly uplifting, in the sense that the film says that it is possible to be content with the lives we lead. American Beauty is a masterpiece, which brings theatre and disheartening pragmatism with an overwhelming calm and tender sense of beauty. A film which could possibly change your life, or at least your perceptions on it.