An American Masterpiece of Originality

Rating: 10/10 (22 November 1999)

American Beauty is a small American masterpiece. Director Sam Mendes aims dead center into the bitingly funny, dark and confused hearts of two parent and child sets entwined together somewhere in SUV-land, with devastating consequences. The film's narrative offshoots revolve around Kevin Spacey's transitional quest to wrest joy and meaning from the vacancy of his life through an obsessive preoccupation with his daughter's alluring cheerleader friend, Angela (Mena Suvari). Waking up, searching for meaning and taking back your life can be a deadly business.
One quickly recognizes the misplaced dreams and ideals in Lester Burnam's(Kevin Spacey)sleepwalk through a manicured life alongside his controlling and abusively compulsive wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening). Roses become a metaphor for both confinement and for spiritual liberation. Sizing all of this up, daughter Jane (Thora Birch) leases her existence between these pathetically incapable child-parents with contempt and longing for some way out, if she just only knew what is was.
The emergence of newly moved-in next door neighbors completes a head-on collision with sexual yearnings, lies, truth, and disaffection -- much of it watched through the camcorder lens of the new neighbor's son, Ricky (Wes Bentley). The neighbor, Marine Corps Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper), wages war on his marginalized and broken wife, Barbara (Allison Janney) his drug-dealing son, and ultimately himself. Ricky's camcorder brings it into pinpoint focus one dark, fearful, tender and revealing night. Through it, Ricky drinks in the unseen and momentary beauty within an often painful and ugly life. To be "ordinary" is to be dead, and at the right moment, being dead can evoke God's steady and unblinking gaze looking back through the camcorder lens.
American Beauty is integrated along every edge of the production seam. Director Sam Mendes left little to chance. Good dark comedy films are easily vindicated when the dark and funny elements weave effortlessly back and forth. In American Beauty, they are so integrated as to be nearly indistinguishable. These days, an audience is grateful for an honest arrival to the optimum moment in a story, even if it knows what is coming. This film repeatedly rips viewers from comfortable expectations, bringing them much closer the heart of important moments -- leaving them as surprised and emotionally swept up as the film's characters find themselves
American Beauty is a visual story splendidly complemented by the brevity of its dialogue. The camera is not merely present to reveal a story but part of the story itself. The characters are facile, funny, moving and wretched. Annette Bening keeps the comedic tones of her character intact while revealing an underbelly of fragmentation and a need for control as expressed in the furious pursuit of material success. Benings's potentially Oscar worthy performance is capped in a scene in which her character viciously berates herself after an all day effort to sell a house ends in failure. Spacey's performance is a steady centerpiece to which all other characters and narrative elements launch and repeatedly return. Wes Bentley and Thora Birch team-up as counterpoints to Bening's and Spacey's empty existence by seeking some measure of the meaning eluding both their confused and destructive parents.
American Beauty is perhaps the most unique, creative and affecting film since Pulp Fiction and arguably the best American film of 1999.