A film to be viewed on several levels

Rating: 10/10 (13 March 2000)

(Note: this comment will contain some remarks which might be viewed as spoilers by some, so take care.)
After having read some of the other comments on "American Beauty" I am made to be grateful that human beings are not telepathic, for we would surely drive each other mad. Some folks just didn't see the movie I saw (nor I the one they saw, evidently).
The film is nuanced and careful; it is at the same time a dark comedy, a murder mystery, an obsidian-sharp dissection of modern American mores, and an exploration of the nature of beauty. It succeeds in being all of these things, although maybe less at the last of them than at the others.
Being a parent of a twenty-one-year-old daughter and the quondam stepparent of four stepdaughters who are all older, I have a R/L base to use in evaluating the two girls' performances, and must say that they are directly on target. There are other kinds of teenagers than those two, but both portraits are accurate and clear. The girls are used both to illustrate the effects of suburban life in the USA on ordinary people (this film puts one, indeed, in mind of the film of that name), and to show the vapidity of the adults' lives and souls. Not a new device to be sure, but well executed here. The "psycho" young man, who is probably the most sane character in the movie (again, not a new concept, but done to a "T"), serves as the primary source of exegesis and plot development; his camcorder is the leitmotiv which illustrates life's burdens, benefits, and absurdities, while allowing him and his development to act as a counterpoint to and illuminator of the slow awakening of the main character. The kids are thus both very well portrayed and superbly used organizationally by the director and writer.
The central couple, Carolyn and Lester, are stellar. Lester has led a lackluster life, as he thoroughly realizes, and his sudden infatuation with his daughter's purportedly promiscuous friend awakens him to the need to do something about his situation. His frenetic, perfervid wife, devoting herself to the kind of empty Babbittry that is so common in the States today (I have known people *exactly* like her, and the commentators who feel that Bening is over the mark obviously don't know the mark she's targeting), shows with crystalline clarity how easily we can lose humanity for superficiality (again, not a new tale, but one always worth telling), and acts as the perfect foil for her husband's slow development of understanding and self-awareness.
The ending is no surprise (after all, we're told in virtually the movie's first line that the protagonist dies), but the how-and-whodunnint aspects are not totally predictable until, maybe, five to ten minutes before the end; it's well done. And by the end everybody but "Col. Mustard" (now, there's a spoiler, I guess) has developed into pretty much a good guy of some sort -- or at least an ordinary human being.
Now, that's not too shabby, is it?
If you haven't seen this, do.