Best Movie of the Year

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 1999)

`American Beauty' is a film that comes along and says things like few films have ever done before. A film that is maddening brilliant in how it audaciously blends the absurd with the dramatic.
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) wakes up one morning and announces in a voice-over that his life is miserable and that the highlight of his day will be his morning jerk-off session in the shower. He then proceeds to tell us about how, one year from now, a certain incident will occur. For the next two hours we are exposed to the incidents that lead to that moment.
Lester and his wife Carolyn (Annette Benning) have no marriage. They hate each other and they do not relate to their daughter in any way. Jane (Thora Birch) has little respect for them, in return.
Lester's life changes when he and his wife force themselves to go to a school basketball game, where Jane is performing on the cheerleading team. There, Lester becomes entranced by Jane's best friend Angela (Mena Suvari).
This attraction seems rather frivolous at this point in the film, because it appears that the attraction is based solely on sexual desire. Angela is a beautiful, cocky young woman who's sole philosophy is to not be ordinary. She feels that because she is a stunner--a seductress--she is beyond everyone else. The ironic thing is that towards the end of the film, she is emotionally crippled when she has to admit that she is ordinary. The sad thin, in turn, and what lies at that heart of the movie, is that one does not need to be extraordinary to be ordinary--that beauty lies in everything, as long as such beauty is appreciated.
Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) is the mysterious new next door neighbor who becomes secretly obsessed with Jane--videotaping her at every turn. At first, this activity turns Jane off, until she becomes entranced by the reasoning behind this. His father, Wes, caught him doing pot one day and sent him to military school, where Ricky almost killed a boy--in turn, he was sent to a sanitarium. The family moves in next door and you are given a dose of true dysfunction.
It is through Ricky's obsessive video collection--through which he videotapes the world--that we get to learn the theme of the movie. It is through Ricky that Jane begins to live and learns to love herself. Ricky, one of the saddest characters I have seen in film history, is a boy who learned to appreciate the beauty of life while trying to escape the horrors of his home. His father Wes is an evil man, haunted by demons that are later revealed, who is obsessed with discipline.
I can't say much more about the movie simply because there is just too much to say about it, and also because I don't want to spoil the process the characters take to change their lives and how these lives end up--especially in the very `suspenseful' final minutes.
All I can say is that there are scenes in this film that have hit me like few other scenes have hit me. Much is not seen of Barbara, Ricky's mom, in the film--but one scene, where she looks at her son's beaten faced is so shocking and tragic because of the line she tells him when she touches his face. The words are uttered by a woman who--as the audience can tell--has been emotionally paralyzed by her husband. The words are ironic in the context in which they are said--but the fear and motivation is perfectly understood.
Annette Benning has given the performance of the year. May they give her the Oscar this very woman. This woman juggles drama with comedy like only a true master can. There is one particular scene, where she fails to sell a house, and she begins to cry. Just when you think she is being melodramatic, she begins to beat herself senseless--only to then contain herself. Ditto for Spacey and the bravura turn he gives as a man who basically decides to reclaim a lost life--and focus on what is truly important in his life. From anger to smugness--every expression is as three-dimensional as the next, showing us that he is one of our greatest actors.
The film is completely adept in exploring the dysfunctional lives of characters coming to terms with the meaning of their lives. These are characters who are miserable in their present states. These are characters who decide to change. Some succeed and some fail--sometimes on their own or based on the actions of others. Others, after claiming happiness, only loose it and seek to punish the ones that took that momentary nirvana away from them. Alan Ball directed this complex gem with the finesse only a true master could posses.
The theme of the movie centers around the concept of what is ordinary and what kind of beauty lies within the ordinary and you leave the theatre, after hearing the final voice-over, looking around you and truly observing the significance of everything and how the importance that you give to objects truly reflects the way you perceive yourself and your place in the world.
The metaphors are explored beautifully (i.e. rose petals) as are characters motivations (i.e. the color of hedge clippers). A film so complex in meaning, it will take more than one viewing to fully digest. A film so important because, like few before, it truly makes a brave and relevant comment on our place in the world and how we relate to others. A film that, for me, blew away just about every other film I saw this year.