American Beauty
by Catherine Lee

"Video is a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember, and I need to remember." This sentiment, murmured reverently, in the bracing, darkly comic new film American Beauty, issues from a teenage character that, by the prevalent standards of the suburbs, is a disaster waiting to happen. He's a loner who doesn't have much use for the hierarchies and conventions of high school. He's been hospitalized for his violent tendencies. He's a drug dealer and an obsessive voyeur videographer.

But in the world of veteran television writer but first time screenwriter Alan Ball and veteran stage and first time film director Sam Mendes, Ricky Fitts (a beautiful, creepy, but sweet performance by Wes Bentley) is the only character who seems to understand that he has a soul worth protecting.

American Beauty continues an important tradition in American film: committing to film a potent vision of how we live now. Though film may be a poor excuse, American Beauty will help us remember the sometimes very uncomfortable world we inhabit now. And we need to remember.

"This country is going straight to hell," complains a character in American Beauty. Except for a few politicians and those who think the performance of the stock market reflects the state of society, that sentiment lurks in the minds of many Americans these days.

Kevin Spacey isn't floating in a swimming pool when we meet him, but his voiceover announces that he will be dead in a year, with the same blunt and amused self-loathing of Joe Gillis at the beginning of Sunset Boulevard. Like that Billy Wilder masterpiece, we watch Spacey, a feckless writer of media propaganda, blinded by his own longings and desires, create the trap that will destroy him. More than Sunset Boulevard, American Beauty relies on humor to see us through its vision of a media nauseated culture.

American Beauty is a look at what goes on behind the well-heeled, well-groomed faÁade of a typical, anonymous prosperous suburb or small town refuge. It's a story about how keeping up with the zeitgeist can lead to an emotionally empty, false and miserably confused existence. It inspires chilling shudders the way Ordinary People does, by taking very recognizable foibles and failings and magnifying them. The family in Ordinary People had real tragedies that led to their disintegration.

For the characters in American Beauty their own selfishness is enough to explode the world. It relies on exaggeration and a constant barrage of mordant humor to up the ante. After all, most suburbanites and those who eschew cities are quite pleased with themselves. Witness the two Jims and real estate mogul Buddy Kane (a sublimely oily Peter Gallagher). Many suburban nightmares seem created by urbanites who must convince themselves that the self-satisfied attitudes of their commuting peers who have bought their little patch of peace and quiet and community must be covering up something truly ugly.

American Beauty is smarter than that. Lester sincerely wants to wake up from the nightmare he has led himself into. After toiling away in media marketing for 14 years, his idea of the beauty that can awaken him is, not surprisingly, horrifically banal: a blond teenage cheerleader. The path he chooses to seduce and win this beauty, who happens to be his daughter Jane's (Thora Birch) good friend, is much more interesting than his chosen lovely.

Of course, he can't see that. He sees only loveliness and rose petals. (Lester's fantasies are wonderful.) She is as vulgar and ordinary -- a term she fears more than anything -- as any American dream. The luscious Angela (Mena Suvari) will achieve the frigid materialism of Lester's wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) much more quickly, perhaps even before turning 30. In Sunset Boulevard Cecille B. DeMille says, "A thousand press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit." In Angela's case, a thousand fashion magazines and the "culture" they engender seem to have done the job.

Every performance in American Beauty is exceptional. With such acute well-written dialogue, guided by a gifted director, it isn't surprising. Even Chris Cooper, who is given only a caricature to bring to life, breathes incredible dignity into the controlling ex-Marine colonel psycho. Kevin Spacey is absolutely wonderful. His expressions, his body language, every line delivery all build sympathy for a guy who is truly pathetic. He deserves an Oscar nomination.

American Beauty has its faults. You can see the ending from the minute Lester and the two Jims go jogging, but American Beauty makes you pay sharp attention to what trap you might be setting for yourself while providing plenty of laughs. Ricky Fitts can see the beauty in the world. The rest of us should make sure we can too.

Copyright 2000 Ad Media Inc.