September 15, 1999 | By turns savagely funny and sympathetically insightful, American Beauty is a darkly comical tale of toxic discontentment and not-so-quiet desperation. “In less than a year,” Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) matter-of-factly warns us while narrating the opening moments, “I’ll be dead. But I don’t know that yet. In a way, I’m dead already.” Much of the movie, however, is devoted to his uncharacteristically impulsive grasp at a new lease on life.
When we first meet him, Lester is going nowhere slowly. A self-described “loser,” he is edging near total burnout at his writing job for an advertising magazine. Away from the office, within a handsomely appointed home in a sterile suburb of tree-lined streets and meticulously manicured lawns, he is hopelessly estranged from his wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), a tightly wound control freak who works as a real-estate broker, and his daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), a sullen teenager who hates both of her parents.
Lester is past the point of caring, and devotes his meager energies to simply enduring. “I feel,” he says, “like I’ve been in a coma for about 20 years.” But he immediately reawakens when he sees Jane’s new best friend, Angela (Mena Suvari), a brazenly alluring nymphet who brags of her sexual misadventures and dreams of becoming a supermodel. (She recently had sex with a fashion photographer, Angela tells Jane, because the guy “shoots for Elle, like, on a regular basis.”)
It doesn’t take long for Lester to have sexual fantasies about the underage object of his desire. It takes even less time for those fantasies to fuel a serious case of the middle-age crazies.
Lester leaves his job – but not before blackmailing his employers into providing a generous severance package – and works at working out to turn himself into a buff babe magnet. He relives his youth by buying the car of his teen dreams, a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, and applies for a low-stress position as burger-flipper at a fast-food restaurant. He also reacquires his taste for smoking pot, buying his primo stash from Ricky (Wes Bentley), the spookily self-possessed son of Brad’s new next-door neighbors, a stern ex-Marine (Chris Cooper) and his catatonic wife (Allison Janney).
The great thing about Spacey’s perfect-pitch portrayal is that, as Lester joyfully immerses himself in a mid-life crisis, he appears to be surprising no one more than himself. It’s a terrifically physical performance – Lester moves freer, faster, and actually radiates a joyful glow as he spews venomous sarcasm – but Spacey also relies on subtlety and nuance in conveying his character’s metamorphosis into a born-again free spirit. He remains somehow sympathetic even during Lester’s eruptions of rage while bandying with Carolyn, making it unmistakably clear that he still dearly wishes to connect with this woman who has denied him love – and sex – for so long.
Of course, Lester’s outlandish behavior repeatedly dismays and disturbs his wife and daughter. Carolyn seeks solace – and a few selling pointers – from the local “King of Real Estate,” the smarmy Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher, who continues to evolve into a world-class character actor as he ages out of his pretty-boy good looks). Meanwhile, Jane finds a soul mate in Ricky, despite his creepy habit of videotaping dead animals, windblown trash and, whether she wants to be on camera or not, Jane herself. Ricky bristles under the authoritative control of his martinet father, who demands that his son submit to urine tests for drug use. But things don’t really turn bad for Ricky – and everyone else – until his rigidly self-disciplined father loses control.
American Beauty hardly is the first movie to take a sharply satirical view at the dark secrets and pent-up passions that simmer beneath the façade of suburban contentment. But screenwriter Alan Ball, a TV sitcom veteran, takes a fresh approach to the familiar territory, tempering his acerbic wit with a bemused empathy that prevents his characters from degenerating into caricatures. Even Carolyn, who starts out as sketchy cartoon of a shrill perfectionist, slowly emerges as a fully rounded human being beset by panic attacks and anxious self-doubt.
As Carolyn, Bening gives a bravely and vividly precise performance, delving deep beneath the skin even as she plays for laughs. Much the same can be said for every other member of the estimable ensemble cast chosen by first-time feature filmmaker Sam Mendes, a British-born stage director with two recent Broadway smashes (Cabaret, The Blue Room) to his credit. Working primarily in a style best described as slyly heightened realism, greatly enhanced by Conrad Hall’s artfully evocative cinematography, Mendes occasionally pauses for flights of surreal fantasy. Even more impressively, he gracefully maneuvers through a tricky shifting of gears in the film’s final minutes, as American Beauty smoothly segues into an unexpectedly moving consideration of just how beautiful life can be.
To be sure, it may be difficult to fully understand or appreciate the wonder Lester experiences during his climactic epiphany. “But don’t worry,” Lester comforts us. “You will. Someday.” Seeing American Beauty is a good way to start.
