A Tribute to the Beauty of Life.

Rating: 9/10 (19 May 2000)

It happens very rarely. You meet people in life who leave you with a lingering sense of familiarity. People, who no matter what they are, leave you with a sense of having asked a few questions; questions you have been wanting to ask yourself for a long time but have been putting it away simply because you don't want to face them. That's what happens when you start understanding the characters of `American Beauty'. It's like looking at the mirror and seeing someone you don't want to see, you don't want to know.
This film is an acknowledgement of our times; the pain and the curses that it bringsand the hope that it still instills in individual inspite of it. The story begins in a slow, casual narrative with a kind of indifference that makes it extremely tragic. But then as you zoom in to the lives of the characters you sense the dormant passions, the fears, the hope. Sam Mendes has done an excellent job in scattering a handful of characters in a plot where they are caught in the ebb and flow of life. Even if they run, they don't go very far, and finally come back to where they started. The background music complements the sensitive slowness of the film in a manner that is quite soulful. The camera acts almost like a silent observer and its role is, to have no role in the story. It just documents actions, reactions, emotions and feelings. In the noninterference of these other ingredients of film making, what gains poignance is the story, the plot, the lives of the characters. All the character in this film, the father, the mother, the daughter, her friend, the daughter's boyfriend, his father, his mother the neighbours  all of them are all caught in a society which has sapped their spirits in some way making them dysfunctional pieces of life. Life, which leaves no purpose, no meaning. It is a simple rambling on of mundane existence which one seldom questions. Yet one cant blame the society because what makes a society is the people. And one can't blame the people either. They are caught in such a black hole in time, which refuses to acknowledge them, as individuals with their individual preferences, which they can't live with, can't live without! The loveless marriage of Kevin Spacey, the stage of his life determining his need for a sensuous relationship if not a fruitful one, his life drifting away in front of him like he never belonged, his wife's new lover, his unhappy job situation, his lust for his daughter's friend are not connected events yet they have a bearing on each other leaving him no room for escape. Yet he tries to be an understanding father, a compromising husband, a faithful employee. He tries but fails. He is a guy I have seen next door, you have seen next door. He could be anywhere, but only in a time like this, when individualism has brought with it the bane of isolation. You empathize with him and wonder, `Haven't I ever felt this way?' And then when you see this man changingslowly but steadily transforming himself to what he would really like to be, you feel happy for him. He is beginning to understand his space in this world and Kevin Spacey does a wonderful job of portraying that transformation in the character. He has got into the character like it was he. The collage of the other characters brings out the fears, the insecurities, and the confusions that we live with. Annette Bennings' portrayal of the frustrated wife is absolutely fantastic. The character lives through her emotional outbursts, her rigorous routine life, her crippled relationship with her husband, and her unsatisfied professional life with such amazing chaos and yet it is so simple actually. It is so natural! Her internal traumas are well portrayed by the actress and you feel sorry for her even when you know she might have had a way out of the tragic situation she is in. Thora Birch is the absolute teenager. Caught between socially accepted concepts and her own self which does not fit in there, like any other teenager anywhere in the world in times like these she wonders whether she is a freak! Allison Janning and Chris Cooper are stunning in their short roles. They portray the senselessness of a system that breeds self-denial as part of societal ethics, some cope with it some take shelter in letting their minds wander. They are like two sides of a coin, so different from each other in dealing with truth yet so similar in what they are running away from.
Wes Butler as Ricky is perhaps the only one among the characters who has retained his sanity. His ability to see beauty in small, inane things surface so gently through the chaos in the film that one suddenly realizes what one is missing. It questions our inability to fathom darkness and touch light, our insufficiency to deal with our schizophrenic selves caught up in the mess of societal paradigms. He retains his individuality by being a part of a system that is rotting. In fact by helping the system to rot. His dealing in drugs thus becomes symbolic of a person who is helping a dying system die. He is abnormal. He does not fit in; perhaps that is his way of not conforming. But the most poignant part of the film is the end. When you see Lester's entire life pass through a haze of the present, you feel so completely awed at what beauty life actually holds for every one of us. As the glorious days of his childhood, the loving days of his marriage, his daughter float across his mind, and you hear him say how full of gratitude he is for all the wonder and beauty life actually has to offer, you just sit there in that balcony seat and shut your eyes for a second to glance into your soul. You wonder, `Why did all that laughter have to die?'