Plot Intro
Lester Burnham and his wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening) live a pretty miserable middle-class suburban life. Both are struggling in their careers and Lester particularly feels emasculated by his controlling wife and unpleasant daughter Jane (Thora Birch). But when he becomes sexually obsessed with Jane’s friend Angela (Mena Suvari), Lester finds himself reinvigorated, while Carolyn and Jane follow their own path towards sexual awakening.
A note on Kevin Spacey: Yes, this film threw us into a bit of a quandary. Numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, some which even Doug and I both heard about from friends more closely connected to the Old Vic (where Spacey was Artistic Director), led to us wondering whether we watch the film at all or just skip it. On the one hand, Spacey is not the only person in the film industry with fingers pointed at him post-MeToo. On the other hand, the allegations against him are so numerous and so well-known that it is safe to say at least some of them will be found to be true.
But two main reasons led me to decide to watch and review the film. Firstly, I think it would be unfair of us to condemn and shirk off a film because of one person involved in its production. The skill put in by director Sam Mendes, writer Alan Ball, and the other cast members should still be recognised. Secondly, it would also be unfair of us to react so extremely to Spacey, when we have seen plenty of other actors and filmmakers in our project already who have had allegations. Woody Allen, Morgan Freeman, Dustin Hoffman, Sylvester Stallone, and Liam Neeson, to name a few, have been involved in other unsanitary controversies too. It makes me question whether, if their co-stars were still alive, what Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, Ray Milland, and Laurence Olivier all got up to behind closed doors.
As such, I chose a middle ground that suits my own conscience- I would watch the film but I won’t touch upon Spacey’s contribution to it. Perhaps, in the future, when the news of his misdeeds are less raw, I will blog about him more openly.
The review itself:
The 90s ends with our first non-period drama since 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. Like the 80s, the 90s has favoured period dramas with magnificent costumes and substantial running times, but with a lot more fervour and involvement. American Beauty stands starkly out, and is more a reflection of that monotonous, late-90s/early-00s moodiness. It connects to a time when The X Files, Bjork, Buffy and Madonna’s Ray of Light were the plats du jour, and The Simpsons had made society more reflective of itself.
All in all, American Beauty’s major themes are great food for thought. It covers similar territory to Fight Club, which was released in the same year. But while Fight Club put more emphasis on masculinity and mediocrity, American Beauty tackles the sex vs prudishness conflict that covers middle-class suburban life. Both Lester and Carolyn are in a state of stagnating, frustrating misery. They discover their more lively, life-affirming sides not through beating each other senseless in an illicit underground fraternity in which everyone punches each other, but through sex and, in Lester’s case, drugs. The irony is that, while they have painstakingly worked to create the “perfect” and “successful” lives which involves the conventional ingredients (a white-picket fence, a well-placed hairstyle, one or two 4 x 4’s, an expensive couch etc), they gain true happiness through infidelity, hedonism and shameless disrespect towards virtually everyone. The film, for its first hour at least, dissects the way in which we, as a society, push so hard towards self-restraint and glossy perfection, that we end with an unconquerable desire for and fascination with the darker elements of the world.
The ultimate irony is that the most seemingly-perverted of characters, the Burnham’s new neighbour, a teenager who secretly films people played by Wes Bentley, is actually the most enlightened, respectful, a mentally sturdy character in it.
It is the second hour where things go downhill. Despite a clever and witty script, and an outstanding performance by Annette Bening (I was living for her erratic and unpredictable histrionics), the tone of the film remains the same as it was when it started. Nothing really escalates, and the plot develops into yet more introspective speeches and melodramatic events. The last half hour especially descends into make-it-up-as-you-go-along plot devices. The neighbour’s suppressed homosexuality, Jane’s decision to run away, Carolyn’s breakdown in the rain, and Lester’s eventual murder. None of these really connected up for me, and don’t provide a satisfying ending for a film that starts off as a pretty on-the-nose social commentary. I think that these sort of plot devices were just fashionable in the era.
American Beauty is one the subtler, more cerebral additions to the Oscars canon. But no, it hasn’t really stood the test of time even though it’s only 20 years old, and it’s pretty disgraceful that the more cogent, innovative Fight Club didn’t even warrant a Best Picture nomination.
Highlight
Annette Bening’s attempts to sell a hopeless house, and her breakdown after she fails miserably, is a 2-minute sketch in itself.
Lowlight
The final half hour descends into pretty chaotic story-telling.
Mark
5/10
And so we end the ‘90s. It’s been a whirl of mainly period dramas and weighty, melodramatic stories, and ending with American Beauty is perhaps a fitting end to a decade wriggling freer than ever of polite constraints and mannered dialogue.
I’m going to deal with the elephant in the corner first. It was impossible for me to fully engage with this film because it features Kevin Spacey playing a predatory individual, lusting after the neighbour’s teenage daughter. As Kevin Spacey is now known to be a predatory individual who lusted (and more) after young teenage boys, it’s all incredibly difficult to watch. Spacey is a good actor, but his behaviour cannot be excused or swept aside, and this was the closest I’ve yet come to refusing to watch one of our films. Every scene he was in, I ended up thinking of his actions and what he has done to innocent people, and the power that he has wielded over young, impressionable people in his industry. He has ruined his own art, and it may well be that he never works again. Not our loss, but his own.
However, Paul argued that to judge a whole film, complete with cast, crew, writer and director, by one man’s actions is unfair, and so I agreed to watch the film. I’ll be frank - Spacey aside, I still do not like this film. It is often dull, and has long protracted scenes which feel written purely to appeal to angsty teenagers. The now infamous scene where they watch a plastic bag in the wind and label it the most beautiful thing feels overwhelmingly trite. I remembered Family Guy’s spoof of this scene where God shouts down: ‘it’s just some trash bag blowing in the wind. Do you have any idea how complicated your circulatory system is?’
This is the main issue for me with this film. It’s overblown, obnoxiously seedy, without real point and at the end throws in a manufactured moral about all things having beauty. The numerous moments of ‘symbolism’ (e.g. red petals, Nazi memorabilia, references to homosexuality) are all stuck in as if the director knew this was a film destined to be studied at A-Level. Themes, themes, themes.
But does it fit in the ‘90s? Yes it does really. It feeds into that whole over-the-top, slightly trite film-making that we see here. A lot of the speeches and scenes are long in the way that we’ve seen in Braveheart and Shakespeare in Love, but they’re lacking in the fun that those films also brought. In fact, that’s the real thing that separates this (negatively) from this decade’s peers - it’s not fun. There are a few half-laughs but as a whole it’s oppressively miserable: an emo’s wet-dream. Annette Bening marks herself out as an always-good actress and Allison Janney makes the most of her terribly under-used role, but as a whole the film felt full of itself and caught up in its own pretentious airs, leaving me bored and uncomfortable.
Highlight
An early scene where Annette Bening is desperately trying to sell a house is fun, and Bening camps the hell out of it. If it’d taken more turns down this style, I think I’d’ve enjoyed it much more.
Lowlight
Spacey is now impossible to separate from his roles. He may have been a good actor, but now every scene he features in brings to mind his predatory and abusive behaviour - and how long Hollywood tolerated it until it was brought to the light.
Mark
1/10. An iconic movie.
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