A Remarkeable Film

Rating: Null/10 (17 February 2002)

American Beauty:
Have you ever just gone through the motions of life? You get your degree, get married, have the requisite child, and then go on autopilot. Day after day you struggle out of bedmaybe kiss your wife hellomaybe not.grunt at your child and struggle in to work. You manage to smile and slink your way through the day and then it is back home again. You struggle through a meal with your wife and child where neither pays the least bit of attention to you and then it is off to bed. This is where it really gets fun since your wife wants to have nothing to do with you at this point. How would this make your feel or act? Better yet how would you act if suddenly you woke up and saw what was happening to your once promising life? American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes, and written by Alan Ball explores this scenario and the consequences that follow.	Lester Burnam has the life I described above. His wife, Carolyn, and his daughter, Jane, really have nothing to do with him. Carolyn has become the homemaker from hell with perfect meals accompanied by the sound track to South Pacific every night. She makes a living outside of the house as a real estate agent and seems to be having more success at it than Lester does in his job with a magazine, and she doesn't let Lester forget this. Lester's daughter Jane is going through all the typical high school angst trying to figure out where she fits in and she has no interest in having Dad as part of her life.	Everything changes the night Carolyn drags Lester out to see Jane and her dance team perform at the high school game. As Lester blearily observes the performance his eyes are slowly drawn towards Jane's friend, Angela. While he is watching her something in him begins to awaken and stir. She is a blond vision of sex drenched dreams.	Shortly thereafter Lester attends a work function with his wife. While Carolyn is making eyes with the top realtor in the area, Lester comes upon his new teenage neighbor working as a waiter. They end up out back in the alley talking about life and, well for lack of a better word, smoking dope. When the headwaiter appears to chastise his errant waiter Lester is amazed to see him tell his boss where he can stick his job. The creature that was stirred by Angela is now fully inspired.	Throughout the rest of the movie we see how Lester reacts to everyone that formerly had some means of control over him. The consultant at his job, his wife, and even his daughter are amazed but not necessarily pleased by the new Lester. The movie continues from this point showcasing how Lester, Carolyn, and Jane all react to the changes in life and how it effects each of them.	Kevin Spacey plays Lester as if he was born to this role. He starts off the movie barely able to move from room to room. The bathroom scene shows how is wife has affected him and his despair at going to work shows through as he is barely able to stay awake. His wife runs roughshod over him and he crumbles. When he begins to undertake his transformation Spacey takes us a little step each time showing the Lester that once was as he comes forward. Spacey's timing and dialogue skills are shown to great heights throughout. He turns a simple sentence, `I rule!' into a battlecry for all downtrodden men. Very few actors could have handled this as well.	Annette Bening, as Carolyn, also does a fine job as his wife however many people could have handled this role as well. She runs the gambit from total controlling wife/mother to falling apart woman but something was missing in how she did it.	Thora Birch, Jane, handled her part better than Bening. She had the teenager embarrassed to be seen with the parents down to a t. At the same time she also had her own awakening to the fact that she didn't always have to play second fiddle to her star friend.	This was an exceptionally well written movie. It did have some `artsy-fartsy' moments in it that slowed some of the scenes down but Spacey powered through them in one of his best performances yet. I highly recommend this film. ***1/2