Movie Review - American Beauty
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1999 / 121 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
“My name is Lester Burnham. I am forty-two years old. In less than a year, I’ll be dead.”
With these words opens the most hypnotic, poetic, life-affirming film of the year, and easily one of the best films of the decade.
The genius of “American Beauty” is not easy to describe. It is not easy to explain. The movie is not like your average film. It is, in fact, a movie unlike any that I have seen. More than anything I believe this suggests that the film is well on its way to becoming a classic.
It is a simple tale. It is the tale of a neighborhood. More specifically, it is the story of a family. The Burnhams. Lester Burnham (the main focus of the film, its imperfect heart, in fact) is a man facing the middle of his life with little or no interest. He’s the sort of man whom people don’t remember meeting. His ordinariness is the bane of his existence.
His wife, Carolyn, would seem to the source of many of his problems, but that would be unfair. She has a few problems of her own. She is better at hiding them, that’s all. So good that she barely acknowledges them to herself.
Their daughter, Janie, is perhaps the most well-adjusted. She has made no illusions about life. She is insecure, unhappy with herself, and searching for something better. Something which her parents begin to do through the course of the movie.
“American Beauty” is a rare, beautiful movie. It is a movie that could easily be depressing. As Lester tells us when we first meet him, he is doomed. Thus Lester’s metamorphosis becomes poignant and sad. As we see him striving, experimenting and discovering, we know that it will all end much too soon. As Lester, Kevin Spacey delivers a marvelous performance. The sort of performance that The Academy might overlook, but which the history of cinema certainly will not. This is a daring, brilliant performance. The sort of thing so good that a lesser actor might get typecast for it.
In fact, all the performances are superb. Annette Bening brings sadness and pain to a role which could have easily degenerated into yet another domineering bitch. It’s really quite amazing. As are the other performances in the picture: Wes Bentley as Ricky Fitts (a character we don’t quite know what to make of), Thora Birch as Janie, Mena Suvari as the seemingly-well-adjusted cheerleader (who isn’t quite as healthy as she seems) and the rest all give their all, imbuing American Beauty with amazing tenderness and intensity.
The film is, from beginning to end, a triumph of script, visuals, direction, acting, editing, you name it. This is a film focusing not on special effects or plot, but instead on humanity itself. It triumphs because it shines its light onto us and makes us examine our own soul.
And that is the most special effect of all.
