New Neighbors Take Out An Old Marriage

Rating: 10/10 (22 July 2008)

American Beauty finds successful forty something couple Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening coming to a crossroads in their marriage. Each of them is going through a mid-life crisis, manifesting itself quite differently in them and in their daughter, Thora Birch. The three of them have become like strangers occupying the same household and no kind of family.
Spacey is bored with his job, his wife, and his life. His boredom is showing in his work and he's asked to leave, but not after extracting a nice severance package. Going back to his days as a youth, he gets a job in a fast food place and he buys an expensive classic car he's always wanted to own. And he's taken an interest in his daughter's friend Mena Suvari.
Bening has become enamored of success and self help programs. She's a real estate salesperson and tries hard, maybe too hard. Sensing Spacey's indifference to her she drifts into an affair with real estate mogul Peter Gallagher. He actually tries at one point to rekindle things, but she worries more about Spacey spilling beer on the couch. Talk about cooling off the romance.
All their lives change when they meet the new neighbors, the Fits Family. Withdrawn subdued mother Allison Janney and son Wes Bentley who is a drug dealer and who interests both Birch and Spacey for different reasons.
But the most interesting part in American Beauty for me is Colonel Frank Fits of the USMC, father and husband and a man with a lot of issues that you will find out if seeing American Beauty. Though Spacey was Best Actor for 1999 and Annette Bening was nominated for Best Actress, but lost to Hilary Swank for Boys Don't Cry, to me Chris Cooper's performance as Colonel Fits steals the whole film.
Director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball who won Oscars in their categories respectively opted for the Sunset Boulevard format of having the movie at intervals narrated by protagonist Kevin Spacey just as William Holden narrated the Billy Wilder classic. But the whole feel of this film most reminds me of the Gothic characters of Reflections In A Golden Eye. Even the fact that one of the major characters is a military man. Back in the day Reflections In A Golden Eye was a box office failure, but the success of American Beauty proves just how far ahead of its time Reflections In A Golden Eye was.
Oh and I forgot, American Beauty was the winner of the Best Picture Oscar of 1999. It's destined to be an American classic Beauty for generations.