Spectacular, poetic, beautiful

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 1999)

There is a moment in each great film when I know that I am watching something special and what was a pretty good movie becomes a great one. I knew that `American Beauty' was a great film when Ricky Fitts, played by Wes Bentley, zoomed his camcorder lens past the shallow, seductive Angela (Mena Suvari) and onto the reflection of the deeper and more genuine Jane Burnham (Thora Birch). That shot basically sums up the oh-so appropriate tagline for the best film of 1999, `... look closer.' The film never lets us down from there. It challenges us with issues as far-reaching and deep as the true meaning of beauty and the struggle to find some worth in life, to simply how we, if we should, relate to our own children. Even with all this baggage that would sink lesser films into excessive preachiness, `American Beauty' is never anything less than completely entertaining with its biting humor and rich visuals. Kevin Spacey's performance is a masterpiece of nuanced understatement, just as Annette Bening is perfectly overstated. Though we know from the first few minutes that the film is a tragedy, it does not make us any less sad when the inevitable climax comes. If the ending is not entirely realistic, it is, in a deeper sense, entirely true. `American Beauty' is `The Graduate' for the 90's generation.