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by ROBERT ZIMMER, JR. |
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Far more important and distinguishing, though, is what the film has to say about the American dream -- or rather, the American nightmare. Our modern society is constructed around the notion that happiness is found through material success: a lucrative big-money job, a nice house in a quiet neighborhood, fancy cars, etc. American Beauty doesn’t just expose this lie -- it shows just how hideous living the lie can be. And believe me, the film doesn’t pull any punches. Prepare to be shocked, offended, horrified, and -- oddly -- to laugh and be moved to tears as well. Spacey (Lester) and Bening (Carolyn) play a couple who, on the surface, seem to have it all. Hyperperky real-estate saleswoman Bening tools around in a Mercedes SUV and clips their rose garden using shears that match her shoes. Lester pulls down sixty grand a year working in marketing, and the couple have a seemingly harmless, typically disaffected teen, Jane, played by Thora Birch. Unfortunately, Carolyn’s fixated on things like the price of her couches, and outselling her chief rival, “The King” of real estate, a perfectly smarmy Peter Gallagher. Failure to achieve results in fits of self-loathing -- tears and self-slapping. Her materialistic perfectionism is tinged with a deadly narcissism -- everything is about her, and maintaining her image of success, success, success. The cracks -- faultlines, rather -- in the facade continue to open up once we peek beyond the surface. Lester is rapidly beginning to realize suburbia has left him soulless. Left to obsessive masturbation by his frigid wife, Lester lusts for his daughter’s best friend, comely teen model/slut Angela (whom you’ll recognize from American Pie). Meanwhile, Carolyn is getting her brains fucked out by The King, whose swagger and oily machismo she finds irresistible compared to Lester’s increasingly rebellious behavior. (He blackmails his company’s ‘efficiency expert’ and quits his job in a marvelous kiss-off scene; buys a vintage sports car; starts lifting weights, and smoking grade A pot.) Dad and Mom aren’t the only ones coming unraveled. Jane, disgusted and alienated by her parents, finds solace in the unnerving calm of her next-door neighbor Ricky (a stunning Wes Bentley, whose blue-eyed gaze will stay with you for a long time). Ricky has a fetish for videotaping just about anything he can, and a seductive insight into what’s real in the world, despite the beatings from his self-loathing Marine Corps father (Chris Cooper). Screenwriter Alan Ball, who toiled unhappily as a TV scribe on “Cybill” and “Grace Under Fire,” manages to find black humour in just about everything as his characters’ worlds disintegrate around them. What you don’t expect is how stunningly poignant the film is when Ball turns his hand to the serious. There is little warning when things lurch from the funny to the profound, or vice versa, but it’s all so good that it hardly seems to matter. Several scenes’ dialogue chill to the bone, most notably a narration Ricky delivers to Jane about one of his videos. (The images, and Ricky’s monologue, sear into the soul. Quiet weeping was heard throughout the theatre.) First-time cinema director Sam Mendes (famous in theatre circles as a stage director) wisely lets the actors carry the story, employing close-ups that showcase the gifted actors and amplify the already powerful emotions. It’s hard to sum up why American Beauty is so stunning. One can cite particular scenes or lines that seem outstanding, but it really is the cumulative effect that counts. Whether through wicked insight or brutal humour to rip off the veneer of our ‘civilization,’ the film does nothing less than scorch through the viewer’s psyche. Several hours and many glasses of wine after our viewing, my friends and I still couldn’t put our finger on it. All we could agree was that it seemed, finally, that a great Truth had been spoken about the price of suburban living. We felt simultaneously liberated, yet horrified at what we’d witnessed about our own humanity. What is success? What is happiness? And why is it that so many of us exhaust ourselves working for both, only to find that once we seem to have arrived, they aren’t at all what we expected? This, arguably, is the monster in the collective American attic, one that’s rumbling louder and louder. Never has there been a more prosperous population, and never have so many been so profoundly unhappy and unfulfilled by the things we thought we wanted. The ugly truth is that there is a dark side to the leisure society. It lures us with the false promise of contentment, all the while eviscerating the core of our humanity. Like a suburban Lord of the Flies, American Beauty forces us to confront our own monstrousness like few films have before. Some viewers are going to be angry, either because they don’t get it (in fact, Kevin Spacey’s final voice-over flat out tells you so), or because they do, and they won’t have appreciated a mirror being held up to them for two hours. Either way, the film sounds a loud and wrenching wake-up call. “America,” it asks, “what have we created for ourselves?” It’s scary territory to walk into. My friends and I vowed to wake up the next day and remember what we saw, and to live differently because of it. That, simply, is the best review anyone can give to any experience. ROBERT ZIMMER, Jr., IS A FILM AND TELEVISION WRITER LIVING IN LOS ANGELES. |
Send your comments to Coffee Shop Times contributor Robert Zimmer, Jr.
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Copyright © 2001 The Coffee Shop Times
American Nightmare
