 |
Teenage wasteland: Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), Jane
Burnham (Thora Birch) and Angela Hayes (Meno
Suvari)-- the young heroes of American Beauty
|
Ninety-two days to the new millennium. Not that anyone's counting. Still, these are angst-ridden times, a final grasp of the familiar before leaping into the Y2K unknown. Hollywood offers a mesmerizing parting shot to 20th-century man. American Beauty -- a dark, cynical look at a suburban family in crisis -- is the perfect moviemade finale to 1990s consumerism.
Its tale (courtesy of TV scribe Alan Ball) is adventuresome storytelling: a fanatic sprint through the final days of a man-in-crisis. Obsession provides the core dramatic energy. In the titillating case of American Beauty, it's a middle-aged man's desire for his teen-age daughter's Lolita-like girlfriend. Redemption seldom feels this tawdry.
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a 42-year-old, mid-level magazine writer about to lose his job courtesy of some recently hired efficiency experts. Things aren't any better at home. Marriage has dissolved into a sexless existence with his shrewish, real-estate agent wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening).
Life for the Burnhams -- like so many middle-class American families -- is all about social standing. Class warfare is commonplace. Keeping up with the Joneses remains a top priority. Theirs is a material world stocked with expensive sofas, a Mercedes SUV and the right hair color. Everything is pretty vacant.
Jane (Thora Birch) is tired of her parents' bickering. Her family's dysfunctional ways are a source of embarrassment.
"I need a father who's a role model," Jane tells a friend. "Not some lame-o geek boy who sprays his shorts every time I bring a girlfriend over."
Jane's next-door neighbor Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) is a silent witness to the Burnham family madness. He's a peeping Tom with a digital video camera. Not that he doesn't have his own worries with a fascist, ex-military father (Chris Cooper) and a catatonic mother (Allison Janney).
First-time director Sam Mendes pushes American Beauty's drama to epic proportions. It makes for the best kind of ensemble storytelling. Every tale, every character and every subplot begs for more screen time. Its tightly wound tale is amazing to behold. Telling its tale of spiritual crisis in one extended flashback, emotionally, American Beauty never falters.
It helps that American Beauty has a rich, literate, complex lead character like Lester Burnham at its center. Never has a troubled man shone so brightly in the moviemade spotlight. Watching his daughter perform a half-time cheerleader number of "On Broadway," Lester grows infatuated with Jane's friend Angela (Mena Suvari). It's like he's a little boy all over again.
"Any friend of Janey's is a friend of mine," Lester gushes to Angela.
Lester -- as brought to vivid life by Spacey -- is an unforgettable loser, the type of ordinary guy who goes through life unnoticed.
"It's OK," Lester tells a real-estate kingpin (Peter Gallagher) who can't remember his name. "I wouldn't remember me either."
Narration early into the film makes it clear that Lester's death is inevitable. "In less than a year, I'll be dead," Lester solemnly says, while American Beauty pans over the Burnhams' white picket world. "In a way, I'm dead already." Not that any final realization of Lester's fate stifles American Beauty's drama. It's riveting just the same.
American Beauty is often unsettling to watch. How could the destruction of a family be anything but painful? In director Mendes' hands, dinner at the Burnhams becomes an exercise in self-loathing. The elegant dining room turns into a battlefield. Vile and spite is served ice cold.
"What'd you expect?" Jane says, answering her father's forced conversation about her day at school. "You just can't suddenly be my best friend just because you had a bad day."
But Lester isn't about to let his wife's smirk go unnoticed. "Oh like you're mother of the year?"
American Beauty's greatest achievement is how it pushes the envelope of taste so deftly. Its eerie look at suburbia is more buoyant than depressing. It's surprising just how many times you find yourself laughing out loud at the film's black comic portraits of midlife crisis. Watching Lester -- especially when he applies for an entry-level job at a fast-food burger joint -- provide the film's best comic moments.
"I'd like to fill out an application," Lester tells a dumbfounded manager. "I'm looking for the least amount of responsibility."
Watching Spacey's smoldering performance as Lester is the highlight of American Beauty. It's as if everything in Spacey's film career has led up to this point. Lester Burnham, simply put, is Spacey's best film performance out of a career of great movie performances (L.A. Confidential, The Usual Suspects and Glengarry Glen Ross). In fact, Lester offers Spacey the opportunity for two compelling performances.
Early into the film, Lester is believably worn and haggard. Life has made him emotionally vacant. But after a glimpse of Angela, Spacey jolts Lester to life with unfettered gusto. He works out. He starts smoking pot. Lester even blackmails his boss for a better severance package. The building obsession is evident in his face like some hormone-driven teen-age boy. What propels American Beauty's relentless drama is Lester's newfound energy.
It helps that American Beauty supports Spacey's performance with an ensemble of dead-on characters courtesy of Ball's vicious screenplay. Bently and Birch give break-out performances as the film's sullen Romeo and Juliet. Cooper is chilling as the violent ex-Colonel. But it's Bening who ultimately matches Spacey scene-for-scene as the witchy Carolyn. A devotee of self-help tapes, Carolyn repeats her real-estate mantra while cleaning windows in her lingerie.
"I will sell this house today," she mutters with forced determination. "I will sell this house today."
For a stage veteran such as Mendes (Royal Shakespeare Company, Cabaret, The Blue Room), American Beauty is a remarkable feature debut, courtesy of Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad Hall. It's visually stunning. It makes one wonder: Maybe all emerging filmmakers should ditch film school for a theater career. American Beauty -- at least from the standpoint of cinema technique -- is a startling masterpiece. Arriving on the heels of a summer where the most talked about movie was the gritty neo-realist horrorfest Blair Witch Project -- American Beauty reminds audiences that film is a credible art form. In a scene where Angela leans back in a bathtub filled with rose petals, American Beauty dazzles the eye.
A welcome addition to the newfound genre of dysfunctional drama -- Happiness, Your Friends & Neighbors, The Ice Storm and Very Bad Things -- American Beauty pierces the meaning of "family values" with its wicked slice of Americana. In this tale, depravity lurks behind white picket fences.
Yet, beyond the sex and sarcastic word play, the overwhelming emotion throughout the film is a feeling of compassion for a once-happy family who has arrived at a very hateful moment in their lives. It's during these moments -- when American Beauty attempts to explain the Burnhams' pain and suffering -- that the film gets under your skin.
Few films ride into town with more positive buzz. After all, American Beauty was the film Steven Spielberg declared a masterpiece. A New York Times article was blown up on lobby displays in local multiplexes. Its message was clear: American Beauty was a must-see film. More importantly, after the curtain closes on the film's unexpected climax, American Beauty is that rare film that equals its advanced hype. In the endless barrage of Hollywood marketing, that in itself might be the film's greatest compliment.
CityBeat: A.
Printer-friendly version
