Hollywood Goes Post-Cynical

Rating: Null/10 (21 February 2000)

Lured by rave reviews and a sexy ad campaign, I was nevertheless expecting not a whole lot from this Big Hollywood tragi-comedic look at a dysfunctional, upper-middle-class suburban family. I mean, you've got the mild-mannered guy-in-a-suit who's going through a mid-life crisis (Kevin Spacey), the materialistic wife (Annette Benning), the snarling, goth teenage daughter, the sexy blonde cheerleader--stereotypes all, or at least they would have been stereotypes in the hands of a less capable director, screenwriter and cast. But here, they're modern archetypes. If there had been nothing else to this movie, I would have been amazed and gratified simply on account of the skillful navigation of the fine line between caricature and character. For instance, I would normally roll my eyes at the simplistic cliche and cheesy humor of a scene where the shallow, materialistic wife pours cold water on an abortive love-making session because she's afraid her husband will spill beer on her $4,000 couch with its Italian fabric. But here, it makes sense, and the characters' motivations and interactions are believable, and it's even a little sad. And there's the arrogant, vain cheerleader: In most movies you're expected to despise her without qualification, but here you get a few subtle hints of her underlying isolation and vulnerability that make sympathy possible, in spite of the fact that her character remains basically a prop. All the characters, lead and supporting, morally ambiguous as well as evil, come out looking human. While I wish Hollywood could make more movies about "normal" people, instead of the privileged suburbanites it identifies most with (maybe American Beauty could have transcended mere excellence and attained immortality if it had been about, say, an auto lube technician married to a receptionist), it seems that the film-makers have deliberately chosen the familiar milieu of a critique of the American Dream to serve as a vehicle for a broader message. Spacey's family has the big house, the picket fence, the mini-van--but they don't have happiness. That's the cliche, but this film rises up from 30 or 40 years of cynical cinematic commentary on the soulless emptiness of bourgeois family life to tell us that there is life beyond disillusionment, beyond (and within) the inevitable ugliness around us, and that it has been there all along. It does so in a way that isn't heart-warming in the way we're accustomed to (it has dispensed with sentimentality as well as cynicism, as they are two sides of a coin), but it is hardly cold, and it is touching and thought-provoking.