American Beauty (1999)
Directed by Sam Mendes
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
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30 films that influenced American Beauty
What critics say influenced American Beauty
I have no idea why the filmmakers decided to telegraph their ending this way,* other than the obvious reference to Sunset Boulevard, which was also narrated by a dead man.
In a nod to Sunset Boulevard, Kevin Spacey narrates from the hereafter, describing in hilarious deadpan the dreary suburban rituals that serve as a "commercial for how normal we are."
As the movie’s narrator, he tells the audience right away he is a dead man describing events leading up to his demise --- a cheap dramatic trick borrowed from Sunset Boulevard.
Like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, narrator Spacey informs us in the opening moments that he's dead, so the suspense emanates from seeing which contender will do him in.
In American Beauty, of course, Lester really is a corpse; as with Sunset Boulevard, the last weeks of a doomed protagonist’s life are narrated from the perspective of the dead man.
Most of those reactions center on Lester Burnham (Spacey), whom we meet in a "Sunset Boulevard"-like introduction in which he announces he's 42, lives on an attractive street in a good neighborhood, has a beautiful wife and daughter, and within a year he'll be dead.
Like "The Ice Storm," which this movie resembles in the way a flashy, virtuosic stage musical recalls a dense psychological play on the same theme, "American Beauty" juxtaposes the world of the adults (glossy, hypocritical, vicious) with the domain of the wise-cracking, yearny kids: noxiously discontent Jane and mysterious Ricky, who (in a "Rear Window" touch) keeps watching and filming her from across the yard.
I'd be hard-put to recall another movie (certainly not Ang Lee's detached and clinical "The Ice Storm") that has so skillfully integrated exuberant humor with heartbreaking pathos.
As Carolyn embarks on her own affair, the libidinous stirrings of the parents mirror -- and, in Lester's case, intersect -- the erotic awakenings of the children, a la The Ice Storm .
At times evoking elements of Todd Solondz' controversial Happiness and Ang Lee's brilliant The Ice Storm, American Beauty weds compelling drama with black comedy.
Like Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, we might see characters realize that there are rules, and that breaking them devastates our own lives and the world around us.
In many ways, this is a film comparable to that Ang Lee masterpiece "The Ice Storm"--both have foregrounds that, at first glance, resemble the texture of a Thomas Kinkade painting, when in fact their interiors are dark and menacing, usually occupied by everlasting tribulations.
But American Beautys satire is usually lighter and more fluid than that, more in the vein of Michael Ritchies Smile or the early portions of Kubricks Lolita.
Sam Mendes is known for directing plays with a fierce sexual edge, including The Blue Room and the current Cabaret revival (if nothing in American Beauty is half as devastating as the new Cabaret, it ain't for lack of trying), and first-time screenwriter Alan Ball was a theater major and playwright before making his name in television, writing for Cybill and Grace Under Fire.
A hotshot English theater director (his Cabaret revival is still on the boards in New York), Mendes gives the film a patina of New Age lyricism and layer upon layer of visual irony.
The view is courtesy of the British stage director Sam Mendes ( "The Blue Room," "Cabaret" ), and we've seen it before, no?
The first motion picture directed by theater veteran Sam Mendes ("The Blue Room," the "Cabaret" revival), "American Beauty" was written by Alan Ball, another Broadway vet and feature film rookie.
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It's the beginning of a courtship between Ricky and Jane, and the interplay of self-conscious imagery, voyeurism, and desire recalls Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape and Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love.
She's like the bride of Frankenstein, or a wacky combination of June Cleaver and Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction."
Colonel Fitts adds another layer to the Sixties subtext that courses through American Beauty, but characters like his had worn out their welcome even before Bruce Derns military man in Coming Home.
They are, come to think of it, a hell of a lot like the goddamn CGI feather that haphazardly connects the febrile disconnectedness of Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump--the implication there being that life isn't so much like a box of chocolates as like a great cosmic wind.
Another rip-off scene shows a paper bag wafting in the wind like the feather in Forrest Gump, only dragging on longer.
Some might see that as a setback, but so what if this is more “Forrest Gump” than “Blue Velvet”?
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And I thought, while we were floating above all those suburban trees and lawns, that we were looking for David Lynch to lend the film his "Blue Velvet" ear.
The zeitgeist was a little slower to latch on, perhaps because of the controversy--they have adopted Blue Velvet's sitcom cousin American Beauty instead.
Some might see that as a setback, but so what if this is more “Forrest Gump” than “Blue Velvet”?
With “Twin Peaks” on television and Blue Velvet in theatres, he showed us just how much evil can lurk behind the facade.
Predating American Beauty (though Fassbinder's Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? beat both to the punch), Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998) deserves a mention here as being not only painted in a similar hue, but also not interested in the slightest in celebrating the absolute emptiness of American Beauty's worldview.