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Piercing beaty
by CarlosC (movies profile)
Oct 17, 2006
13
of
17 people found this review helpful
Middle-class angst is the theme of director Sam Mendes' commanding first film, AMERICAN BEAUTY. The subject has not been explored with this much insight since David Lynch tantalized us with movies like BLUE VELVET (1986), in the Eighties. Well, it's the Nineties, now -- the cultural landscape has shifted. And, Mr. Mendes is in tune with the tiniest nuances and fluctuations of the American psyche. Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is the modern, American equivalent of James Joyce's Everyman. The reason to invoke Joyce is that AMERICAN BEAUTY plays like the Great American Novel on the medium d'jour -- the big screen. This movie has great literary qualities, without the heavy drone of movies that cut deep sociological grooves -- like, THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997) or AFFLICTION (1998). Without those films' impenetrable density, AMERICAN BEAUTY is layered, and full of depth, and well-crafted down to every knowing subtlety. To cut to the heart of it, AMERICAN BEAUTY is the best movie I have seen this year. Lester Burnham lives the "American Dream." Mr. Mendes has fun with the proposition, and you can almost hear him giggling off-screen, as Lester -- also, like a Joyce hero - really sleeps through his existence. Moreover, his "Dream" seems more like a nightmare. In his pristine, middle class Dream-home, Lester is estranged from the people he loves -- specifically, his wife (Annette Benning) and daughter (Thora Birch). The three co-exist in mutually-exclusive emotional cocoons; interacting through an alienating, social-Internet of an existence, keeping each other at arm's length. They speak past each other, and secretly couch contempt and soreness after years of quiet hurt. "How could he *not* be causing me massive damage?," his daughter gripes to Ricky, the boy next door (Wes Bentley). Ricky's father savagely attacks him from time to time, but, in this out-of-joint culture, Ricky's father's actions are casually equated to Lester's inaction. Most disturbingly, no one is entirely to blame. But, no one is entirely blameless, either. It is a very bold and complex foundation for a mainstream, pop movie. The universe of the film unravels when Lester and his wife secretly attend their daughter's cheerleading meet -- much to the daughter's chagrin. There, Lester spots her kitteny schoolmate, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari). Whatever had been dormant in Lester's soul awakens. Soon, Lester quits his humdrum magazine job to flip burgers (he asks for the position with the least responsibility). He starts working-out, smoking pot, and -- in the movie's most audacious depiction -- graduates from the shower to the bedroom in seeking one specific form of gratification. With perfect casting and outstanding acting all around, this is a magnificent movie. Spacey has never made a false move onscreen. But, in AMERICAN BEAUTY, he's finally met a movie his match. (Carlos Colorado) |
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