Hauntingly beautiful

Rating: 10/10 (14 September 1999)

Go see American Beauty. All of you. Just try to make sure to see it by yourself, in an empty theater.
OK, so you can't do that. But I'm convinced that doing so is the ideal way to get into the feel of this movie. It's a film with a lot of atmosphere, mostly of loneliness and quiet desperation (Thomas Newman's sparse, dissonant score is a great touch). In addition, there will be times which make you want to gasp when others are laughing, and times when you want to laugh while others are gasping. It's just that kind of movie -- a must-see for introverts with a penchant for navel-gazing.
Lester, Carolyn, and daughter Jane are the Burnhams, your standard American dysfunctional family. One can tick off the basic indicators on one's fingers -- hen-pecked Dad hates his stultifying position as a low-level executive, control-freak Mom is obsessed with her real estate job, low-self-image teenager hates her parents, everyone is distant. The family has managed to establish a stable but tenuous equilibrium in their interactions, straining to maintain a facade of normality in their lives.

When the Burnhams are introduced to some people (the Fitts family, Jane's friend Angela, rival real estate agent Buddy Kane), however, the facade quickly comes crashing down, with some astonishing consequences. Lester gets reintroduced to pot, quits his job, and becomes infatuated with Angela; Carolyn begins an affair; Jane realizes that Ricky Fitts is videotaping her (he defends himself by saying he's "not obsessing ... just curious").

It's not so much about what happens, though, as about how it happens. American Beauty outright tells us at the beginning what happens at the end, and yet the finale still manages to come as a shock. The interweaving lines of the plot are familiar territory (Lester's Lolita complex, Jane's insecurity, Ricky's rebellion against his disciplinarian father), but they only serve to guide the audience through the characters' transformations. These transformations are ultimately what drive the film, providing moments of comedy, sadness, and even horror. It's up to the individual viewer to decide which moments are which; some are all three.
The characters are intentionally drawn as two-dimensional and slightly caricaturish, but stellar performances make them tangible and deeply sympathetic. Special mentions have to go to Wes Bentley, whose Ricky Fitts provides the film with the closest thing to a moral center, and Kevin Spacey, who turns in a workmanlike performance as Lester which should be solid enough to garner an Oscar nomination (but probably won't be spectacular enough to win). In fact, the only quibble in this department would be with Annette Bening, whose portrayal of Carolyn is slightly more over-the-top than the rest of the cast.
Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Conrad Hall and first-time director Sam Mendes, and overripe with metaphor, American Beauty will attack each individual audience member's center of gravity and challenge their assumptions. It is profoundly disturbing, but it is also achingly tender, and ultimately contains glimmers of hope and tender soulfulness. In the face of so much pain and dissonance, it remains hauntingly beautiful; as Ricky says, "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it." It's the perfect summary for this extraordinary film.
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