Electricity in the air

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2000)

* * * * (4 out of 5)

American Beauty

Directed by: Sam Mendes, 1999
Electricity in the air

"I rule," Lester Burnham wryly remarks. Unemployed, middle-aged and traumatized by what appears to be a mid-life crisis, these are his words after having purchased the sports car of his boyhood dreams, casually sipping beer from the bottle, dressed in a sweatshirt, bare feet up on the coffee table, and provocatively addressing his bewildered wife, a wretched and cocky real-estate mogul.
It's liberation, it's freedom and we  the viewers  feel it instinctively.
Such is American Beauty through and through. Brimming with sardonic humor and seemingly ready to pop at any given minute. A sharp and incisive critique of modern day consumerism but also a deliriously funny and insightful "set-piece" concerning the post-American-dream America waking up to discover that their eggs are burnt, pancakes notoriously fattening and coffee mysteriously caffeine free. Yes, I am talking in metaphors. The solution? Push the panic button and hit meltdown. American Beauty does so and with an appetite.
Imagine the twisted human hollowness that was so nakedly portrayed in Happiness and so evocatively questioned in Pleasantville. Then cross it with the visual beauty and thematic sorrow of The Ice Storm by way of Spielberg's heartfelt suburban odes to underlying discontent  as glimpsed in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET  and you'll have an idea of both the theme and style of American Beauty.
This is a debut for director Sam Mendes and an amazing achievement. The director and screenwriter have equipped Burnham with something as rare as an opening monologue  not a play-by-play but more of a fairy tale introduction  a major spoiler none the same. To top that off, the best scenes are courtesy of some splendid and intertwined dreamy passages  thick and rich on symbolism and both sexy and surreal  that blend in effortlessly. This is ambiguous and successful filmmaking containing an original cinematic spark.

So, what is wrong with Burnham? Nothing really. Life just got the best of him. His conflict could be an awakening or an emancipation just as well as any classic midlife crisis.
We are of course inclined to believe that it is anything but the latter. Burnham has seen the light.
However, you'll be disappointed if you go in expecting the movie to come up with any new angles or answers. American Beauty is a movie much in the vein of the late 90s  a product of the time it was made in  as it revolves around a general rebellion against all forms of normality, dot.commies and basic consumerism. Nothing more, nothing less. Some characters are as deep as cereal bowls. The message being nothing more than a Nike commercial; Just Do It'.
American Beauty is best when it colorfully and maniacally sticks to Burnham; depicting this little man like a shark circling a victim. You gaze in awe and instinctively familiarize with him, yet at the same time there is an acute awareness of both the frustration, hidden viciousness and primal egotistical nature beneath the smooth surface. If our schools had such a thing as a "suburbia one-on-one" class  to warn kids of the dangers of forgetting to live your life after thirty or forty  then this could be the mainstay of that curriculum.
Amidst the Hollywood stereotyping (the couple next door), the movie somehow still works fabulously. It actually feels like anti-formula because it is  face it  so charmingly formula. I am merely addressing parts I felt didn't work as well as intended, because I was so impressed by the overall movie.
The urge to deliver that drips from American Beauty from start to finish  from the masterful direction by Mendes to all the hypnotic performances  make it a memorable and definite late 90s benchmark and most certainly one to be considered a classic in the years to come.