The Results of Profound Linearity

Rating: 5/10 (17 June 2012)

'American Beauty' is weird on more levels than one, filled with peculiar people who deeply intrigue you in their strange ways. The filmmakers do the same in their premise for a film so difficult to categorise in its distinctness. The film is an odd, upbeat satire on conventional suburban life, an allegory for breaking away from the 'trap' of normality. However, the intense analytic view the film begs and the ironic tone that encompasses it should not conceal a lack of something genuinely compelling for the average viewer, there's nothing and nobody to admire or sympathise with and little to remember but convoluted messages. There's an abundance of wit in certain elements, but no action, drama which takes a linear route and subtle humour which owes more to situations and circumstances rather than characters.
The film portrays this thematic focus of 'moving away from the status quo' through its protagonist, the trivial and lonely Lester Burnham who begins the film with the monologue, "This is my neighbourhood, this is my street, this is my life" which couldn't be more reflective of the word 'average'. An average family life, average 9-5 lifestyle, a spiteful teenager and a garden loving spouse. Suddenly though, the normality takes a different direction with Lester's uncomfortable infatuation with and fantasies of his daughter's friend, Angela. But, is this really the glorified 'escape' from the routineness of his life? He embraces any chance to break away, juvenile pursuits, these unfeasible obsessions, anything as long as he can envisage himself in a more invigorating realm doing something 'exciting'. He then ensues to have a most untypical mid-life crisis which can be humorous in his deluded, misplaced hopes and desires. He ends up being the catalyst for everyone to break away from the norm and pursue some 'excitement' but it is all just a frivolous exercise.
The aim of the film is to show people acting upon the desire to morph themselves from ordinary to extraordinary but they become abnormal and senseless. The characters are detached from each other and after their initial novelties, become tiresome. The acting was impressive, Kevin Spacey in particular brought his 'rebel' to life extremely diligently, but Lester's life doesn't show him moving away from his unremarkable life in a calculated, sane manner and it just wasn't convincing.
The enduring image from the film is one of a plastic bag floating around, deemed by one of the characters as "the most beautiful thing I've ever seen". It means nothing but demonstrates the pretensions of the film to try and mean something truly profound. But people see things uniquely and that is why I neither recommend it nor dissuade you from seeing this. The supposed moral is that normality is a façade. Possibly true, but it won't drive you towards insanity and inanity as it does here.