It's Blue Velvet with a dose of family dysfunction

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2008)

If Blue Velvet peeked behind the curtains of modern day suburbia back in 1986, thirteen years later, in 1999, American Beauty yanked them completely away from the windows and gave them an unsettling, unnerving full view of what goes on behind closed doors. "This is my neighborhood, this is my life", narrates Lester Burnham, and he continues "I'm 42 years old. In less than a year, I'll be dead. Of Course I don't know that yet. In a way, I'm dead already", like Joe Gills (William Holden) of Sunset Boulevard, Lester and the audience know his fate from the beginning, but we soon realize that this is just a small part of the plot. American Beauty is a dark portrait of suburban life. Not quite as dark as Blue Velvet, but dark enough. It is a very bleak dramedy about what life is like for those supposedly living a warped version of the American Dream. People who don't lack anything material, but are unfulfilled, unhappy, dissatisfied, lost and gradually falling apart. They need something that money cannot buy.
American Beauty is a funny, reassuring, wistful and sometimes hopeful portrait of American life that goes places you don't expect it will. Beautiful and brooding, American Beauty is a remarkable film that boasts stunning performances that although initially appears bleak, ends on a satisfying, positive note.