Alan Ball's script is a terrific piece of material, and Mendes responds directly to its subversive, provocative vision of a curdled American dream. But she also reveals the character's true confusion in the final scenes. Occasionally the script flirts with inverted cliches that are threatening to become cliche. The most homophobic character in the movie reveals serious gender-identification problems of his own. But Ball spends just as much time demolishing stereotypes.
Nothing is ever quite as it seems here.
That extends to every shift in tone, whether it's suggested in Conrad Hall's wide-screen cinematography, Thomas Newman's score or Spacey's narration, which tells us at the outset that Lester, our hero for the next two hours, is already dead.