Kevin Spacey at his best

Rating: 10/10 (20 September 1999)

American Beauty is a funny and disturbing film. There are echoes of the voyeurism in "Sex, Lies, and Videotape", the sickening inbred suburbia of "Edward Scissorhands", and the dark humor of "Twin Peaks". In other words, this is really good stuff.
The film is constructed from the archetypal cliches of suburbia. Lolita cheerleaders, depressed goth teens, harried real estate agents, overbearing ex-marines, and our hero, a free spirit who lost his soul in the 9-to-5. Everybody (and I mean everybody) in this movie is leading their own quiet life of desparation, while outwardly displaying a suitable guise of stability and satisfaction. This theme allows the movie to quickly paint the personalities of a quirky and eerie bunch of folks.
We seem to have fewer and fewer options as we mature. The film asserts that plenty of options remain, but that we are simply (perhaps justifiably) too afraid to persue them. When we recognize this truth, and question our own definition of success, we are ripe for a mid-life crisis. Everybody in this film succeeds by rejecting their assigned roles, which leads to exquisite failure in their established lives.
What happens when a sleeping soul wakes up and discovers he is truly free? What if everybody around him is just barely hanging on under the status quo? What if that awakened soul is the wonderfully understated Kevin Spacey? It's a huge subterranean train wreck just waiting to happen, yet the viewpoint of the protagonist and narrator is removed and sardonic. We are left feeling helpless, giddy, fearful, and perhaps motivated to break a few conventions before we petrify.