A mess, but a fine, compelling mess

Rating: Null/10 (22 January 2000)

This is not the best picture of 1999. It however may be the most accessible picture of 1999, in that it tries to be cutting-edge and yet mainstream, cynical yet heartfelt, Todd Solondz and Frank Capra at once. Real-life suburban America is as pathetic as it is gorgeous, as shown by Ricky Fitts, a video-maker/drug dealer who spends his free time showing the beauty in what many do not consider worth a glance. I know I was getting teary while I was in the theater, yet something changed once I left: American Beauty is very compelling, excellently shot (who is the cinematographer?), edited, directed, and acted. However, it's also rather false/crude: it condenses way too much and ends up giving caricatures and surface in the disguise of poetic monologue instead of real depth. The film settles for titillation with its overstepping of social boundaries when it could actually try to be provocative.
You've probably read enough reviews to know the plot and the characters. All of them are pretty over-the-top, with the exception of Alison Janney as Ricky's mother, wonderfully absent in the film. She perhaps says more about the life of a housewife with her line "Sorry for the way the house looks" than Annette Bening can in her incessant rage.
Spacey is as always incredible, but there's something missing, or forced about Lester Burnham. That last Kodak-like monologue reflecting on his childhood, the moments when he speaks nostalgically about college life and meeting Carolyn, even the way he says "I'm great" at the end, all seem very scripted, like a great actor striving to reach a character from a mediocre script. OK- He's in a suburban daze! Right, and he wakes up and remembers how good it was to be young cause he meets this hot chick! And then he dies right when he's happiest! Finally, he gets this great monologue about how great it was to be alive! Raymond Carver, this ain't. It's way too forced.
It's worthwhile and certainly compelling, but the film shouts things in its dialogue that need not be SAID. It contains crudely drawn characters reaching for a 3d dimension. For me, the actor most transcending his lines is Chris Cooper, playing a truly repulsive human being who somehow ends up stirring you and making a lot of sense.
Again, the film is worthwhile, but not the best of 1999, especially if you consider the int'l market. See All About My Mother for a film about the interactions of extreme/pathetic characters well-drawn out and excellently acted, Fight Club for a film that really deals with breaking out of the 90s shell, and The Dreamlife of Angels for the real beauty in the simple things. American Beauty is like a Reader's Digest edition of the three: worthwhile but only a rough draft.