An impressive cinema debut for director Sam Mendes

Rating: 10/10 (21 June 2020)

When American Beauty won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1999 and numerous other accolades it was instantly hailed as a masterpiece and widely praised by critics and cinemagoers alike. In the two decades since it was released, its star has waned somewhat, with accusations that it was simply overrated when it was first released. But that's probably because it was over-analysed and over-scrutinised: it has aged well and remains an impressive cinema debut for director Sam Mendes.
Alan Ball's screenplay concerns a handful of characters living in an American suburb, and is focalised through Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham, who narrates parts of the film. In a foreshadowing of the story's end, the story opens with Lester describing his death; aside from a deliberately misleading scene from the middle of the film at the very start, the plot has a linear narrative: once the scene in question is reached, it marks the beginning of Lester's final day on Earth. The plot is driven entirely by the interactions of the characters and has been subject to multiple interpretations, but it sees Lester deeply bored with his tedious suburban lifestyle and rebelling against it by blackmailing his boss, smoking dope with his neighbour's son, and fantasising about having sex with his daughter's friend Angela. It's often very funny, usually in a cringe-worthy way, for example when Lester is hopelessly besotted with Angela to the horror and embarrassment of his daughter Jane.
The characterisation is strikingly effective, from Lester, through his wife Carolyn and daughter Jane, to his uptight, repressed neighbour Frank Fitts and Frank's rebellious drug-dealing son Ricky. Every character is inherently flawed, which is used to generate both drama and humour; the only characters who seem content with their lot are Jim and Jim, a seemingly happy and well balanced suburban couple who are atypical only in the fact that they are gay. Towards the end of the film, Angela says "I don't think there's anything worse than being ordinary", which is arguably the film's point.
The casting is perfect, with Spacey giving a typically brilliant performance that conveys Lester's sheer boredom with his life perfectly: his face lights up when he first meets Angela, and again later when Ricky offers him a joint. Annette Bening is just as good as Carolyn, who finds her own freedom by having an affair but is mortified when Lester finds out about it, thus shattering her carefully cultivated image as part of the perfect suburban couple. Chris Cooper is astounding as Frank, and once you know that the character is a repressed homosexual, watching the film again reveals whole extra depths to Cooper's performance. During the scene in which a tormented Frank approaches Lester and kisses him, having completely failed to understand the situation, Cooper's expression says far more about what Frank is thinking than his sparse dialogue. In the face of such strong competition, then relative newcomer Wes Bentley almost steals the show as the complex Ricky.
Conrad L. Hall's cinematography is crucial to the film's success, and his dynamic camerawork lends itself well to the ingenious editing by Tariq Anwar and Christopher Greenbury: the iconic first fantasy scene of Lester imagining Angela naked but for the red rose petals is a perfect example. Close-ups and slow motion are used with surgical precision. Thomas Newman's often subtle, often whimsical soundtrack perfectly suits the film's mood and includes perfectly placed diagetic music at key points.
American Beauty may not be held in quite the high regard it once was, and in its blistering satire of American family life it is perhaps a product of its time. But even at its very worst, it's still enormously entertaining, endlessly interesting and brilliantly made, and those reasons are more than enough to make it worth watching.