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Reviewer: Pete Luisi-Mills
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?"–Mark 8:36 Lester Burnham has spent many fruitless years trying to gain, if not the world entire, than at least enough of it to placate his family and to save his own delicate sense of self-worth. Then, one fateful day, he wakes up and discovers that not only is he failing in his pursuits-he's lost his soul in the process. American Beauty is (among other things) a film about the soul. It doesn't say much about where that soul came from originally, or even what it is, exactly-but whatever it is, you can most definitely lose it, and most of the film's characters have: through neglect, sloth, hard-heartedness, or simple old-fashioned sin. American Beauty achieves the near-impossible cinematic feat of presenting us with six more or less unlikable characters (ranging from merely pitiful to infuriatingly hateful) and making us care deeply for all of them. This is achieved through a canny combination of deft storytelling and subtle acting, and the filmmakers make it all look so easy I feel I need to give it a second viewing. Other recent films have covered the gloomy terrain of dysfunctional families and spiritual alienation before (The Ice Storm is an excellent recent example), but American Beauty has a welcome difference-a glimmer of hope nestled in its dark heart, as well as a refreshing sense of humor. American Beauty is deceptively simple, its storyline tracing several criss-crossing relationships between the six primary characters. These include Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a 42-year-old advertising grunt and self-described loser so deeply mired in dead routine he's forgotten a time when life was any other way; Carolyn, his wife, a mediocre real-estate agent and a demonic Martha Stewart who cares more for her prize roses and $4,000 Italian sofa than for her marriage; Jane, their chronically jaded teenage daughter; Ricky, the strange boy next door who, when he's not dealing high-quality pot, spends his time skulking around the Burnhams' hedges videotaping Jane (this unknown to her) with a digital camera; Ricky's dad, the Colonel, a violently homophobic ex-marine so obsessed with discipline and clean living he makes his son give a urine sample every month; and Angela, Jane's attractive cheerleader friend, a manipulative Lolita who enjoys toying with Lester's guilty fantasies. All of these characters have two things in common. Each one is searching for beauty, and each one wears a mask. Lester and Carolyn, both of whom consider their icy marriage to be well beyond redemption, seek beauty in the form of lovers who fit their misguided ideal notions: Lester in the forbidden nubility of young and unremittingly unpleasant Angela, Carolyn in the swarthy form of Buddy Kane, the local "Real Estate King" whose steely eyes leer from the dozens of 'just sold' signs dotting the lawns of her suburban neighborhood. Their foolish infatuations become more pathetic when it becomes obvious to everyone, in the movie and in the audience, that Angela and Buddy don't give a tuppenny damn for Lester and Carolyn, will use their charms to get what gratification and amusement they can and leave them more empty and alone than before. Ricky (who incessantly videotapes Jane through her bedroom window) at first seems creepy and a likely pervert, but turns out to be genuinely seeking beauty in Jane, not Jane's body. Indeed, Ricky videotapes everything, much of it mundane, yet as he shows Jane some of what he has shot, we have to agree: it is beautiful. He's particularly proud of some footage of a plastic bag blowing around in his driveway-"For five solid minutes, it danced with me." Unlike Lester and Carolyn, busy projecting their puerile ideas of idyllic beauty on unworthy subjects, Ricky sees beauty everywhere ("Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.") For me, the masks the characters wore was the most intriguing part of the film: how each person, for varying reasons and with varying success, refused to let their true nature and feelings be known to those closest to them. Lester is the main focus of the film, and he is the one who comes to the decision that the mask he has been wearing for years (happy, complacent family man and satisfied, dutiful employee) is suffocating him. His mask has so fused with his psyche that he no longer remembers a time when he was happy-or honest, for that matter. Lester's decision to liberate himself from his mask is not entirely admirable. It's certainly brave and risky, and a more simple-minded movie would have merely celebrated his decision to throw off his shackles of middle-class suburban placidity, and turn a blind eye to the consequences to anyone else. After all, we place such a high value on freedom and self-fulfillment in American society, we don't want to scrutinize to closely the ramifications such a decision might bring-if we did, it might spoil the warm fantasy. American Beauty is too smart and savvy for this sort of self-satisfied complacency. Lester's new assertiveness and celebration of his own true nature has its good points--the scene where he triumphantly presents his condescending supervisor with his "job description" is one of great 'stick it to the Man' moments in movie history ("My job requires mostly masking my contempt for the a------s in charge, and fantasizing about a life that doesn't so closely resemble Hell.") On the other hand, his new-found freedom and candor leads him to frighten his wife (who possibly deserves it) and his daughter (who doesn't remotely deserve it) with violent outbursts and china-smashing tirades. And his self-revelation is in no way consistently informed by intelligence: he makes foolish, reckless and immoral decisions, mooning over teenage Angela, blackmailing his company (albeit successfully), and squandering his severance pay on a red 1970 Firebird ("The car I always wanted and now I have it. I rule!"). Carolyn's mask is far more deeply rooted and completely transparent; her life is a grotesque pantomime of successful businesswoman and Donna Reed-style homemaker. Like her prize roses, she's all painful thorns, bitter lymph and useless grace. All this does not mean she is unsympathetic; like all the characters in American Beauty, she's deeply flawed, but the film treats her character with pathos, not disdain. In one scene we see her repeating self-help platitudes, trying to convince herself that she is good enough ("You will sell this house today!" she keeps repeating to herself); when she is unsuccessful, her shellacked smile melts away, first sobbing like one bereaved, then slapping and berating herself angrily ("SHUT UP! STUPID BABY!"). The naked emotion of Annette Bening's performance set me squirming. I do not want to write more about the masks worn by Ricky, and his father the Colonel, and Angela the cheerleader, because it would ruin the perfect surprises of American Beauty: not twists of plot-those are a dime a dozen from any hack screenwriter-but revelations of character as masks slip, some suddenly, some gradually. I'm giving nothing away in telling you that Lester narrates this film from the great beyond-indeed, in the very first line of the opening monologue, he announces that "in a year I'll be dead". And here, strangely enough, is where I come back to what I said at the beginning about the film's glimmer of hope. This a film about how Lester learns what true beauty is: what his marriage was before they lost their way; the happiness of his daughter; making the right decision when the time comes, and doing the right thing regardless of what misguided thoughts he may have entertained in weaker moments. The fact that he loses his life just as he discovers what makes life truly meaningful is sad and ironic, but the important thing is that he learned it at all.
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