Is this really what life is like in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century?

Rating: 6/10 (7 June 2002)

"What we have got here is a failure to communicate!" That's mainly what I derived from watching this worm's eye view of a "typical" (?) moderately affluent neighbourhood. Apart from one household consisting of two homosexual males who seem fairly well adjusted to life, every other one in view is totally dysfunctional. Could that hint at an "agenda" on the part of writer or director? The film could be viewed as "Chekovian" comedy perhaps, but the eminent Russian's characters while living lives of quiet (mostly) desperation at least maintained some hope for the future. You could say they "tried". Or perhaps it is a "modern film noir". Certainly, almost all the characters are losers. "Lester Burnham" may have "turned his life around" as has been said, but if so it was in a direction of almost certain ultimate chaos. Only "Angela Hayes", late-teenage girl friend of "Lester's" daughter "Jane" seems capable of salvaging something from the mess.
One could explore the bleak aspects of the other characters: "Jane", totally estranged from her parents in supposedly "typical" teenage fashion, wife "Carolyn" who just occupies the same house as her husband "Lester" without actually "living" with him, or "Col.Frank Fitts, U.S.Marine Corps", a repressed homosexual whose brutal treatment of his family is graphically displayed, or finally his son, who has "coped" with life by becoming a voyeur and very successful drug dealer. Only in this last case are we shown the root causes of these dysfunctions. This is not what I would charaterise as a "positive" film.
There are some rewards, though, in spite of the foregoing negative comments, which derive from my personal dislike of films which emphasise the worst aspects of life. The tawdry and sordid, much beloved by William Faulkner who could well have written this script, are not high on my list of preferences. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening give outstanding performances with many nuances which limn their characters. The rest of the cast seem "over the top" to me, but, but what the heck?!. In a film like this, subtlety might go unnoticed.