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Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) lives on a tree-lined street in suburbia with all the popularly prescribed attributes for an ideal life. This was supposed to be paradise. He introduces us to his staid lifestyle and comments upon the developments which are about to be shared onscreen while informing us that within a year of the story's departure, he will be dead. He and his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) live together with their daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), in a comfortable home very similar (yet superior) to the type which Carolyn sells to other desirous suburbanites and which happily returns her and earns her a decent income. She wears matching dress and gloves to attend to her gardening; pruning the rosebushes and cutting away the roots of the Sycamore tree next door. The Fitts family are the neighbors who have recently moved in next door. Jim (Scott Bakula) and Jim (Sam Robards) are the gay couple living across the other side of the Burnham yard. All in all, it might appear to be an ideal, modern street in contemporary America, but there are aspects in most of their lives that the residents would preferably (in accordance with their own "ideal" images) deny or ignore. The glamour and gloss of these images will be removed sufficiently for us to see the American primitive hidden underneath.
Lester Burnham speaks honestly from the very start, when he draws the home picture for us and simultaneously admits that his most enjoyable moment of the day takes place while masturbating in the shower. Carolyn is frustrated at contending with her male competition, the "king of real estate", Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher). She rushes around, furiously preparing her real estate locations; cleaning and vacuuming every inch dressed in the skimpy slip which helps keep her clothes spotless and her public appearance immaculate. Jane moves quietly between her unfamilial surroundings, only really enjoying the friendship of her blonde cheerleader schoolmate Angela (Mena Suvari) who, inadvertently, is about to become the sexual fixation of her father. Is this beautiful and innocent teenager, who wants to become a model and have the world at her feet, the American Beauty of the title? Yes, but only one. The title refers ambiguously to several different elements found within the film, sometimes sensitively proffered and sometimes cynically shoveled. It is the teenage girl, but it is also the roses that abound (being, after all, the name of one particular sort of rose), the lifestyle and the houses, the relationship between Jane and Ricky, Jane herself, the feeling Lester has when he makes a self-sacrifice, the idealization of muscle, the idealization of breasts, the idealization of the physical, and the idealization of all that is superficial, as well as all that is deep. It refers to much found within the film. Above all, however, it is probably most importantly and most poignantly encompassed in the somewhat variant descriptions made separately by Lester and by Ricky when they refer to the feelings they have in their hearts at special times. Moments of depth grow like odd wildflowers among the perfect weeds in this suburban garden. Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) does his best to run a tight ship, has forced his son, Ricky (Wes Bently), through the mental institution while his demure wife, Barbara (Allison Janney), only seems capable of contending with life once assisted by mother's little helpers. This home abounds in and suffers from repression, suppression, condemnation, confusion, and denial, among other delightful aspects found floating around the sphere of relations. The Colonel doesn't like locked doors inside his house and he doesn't like fags. He doesn't like drugs either and he intends to do everything necessary to prevent his son from ever using them again. Ricky, however, supports his video habit with the income of his lucrative dealership, which, as fate would have it, boasts some pretty useful clients. Those short on dough can always supply other services that might prove useful. One of the many unobtrusive open questions (i.e. don't ask, don't tell) insinuated in the story concerns the source of his special G-13 governmental genetically manipulated grass. Ricky wouldn't be caught dead smoking anything else (except by his father). When rock-faced Ricky first appears on the scene, he is seen constantly shooting tape of Jane as she moves about the street or shelters inside her house. One could easily assume that he's a potential psychotic personality, an obsessive-compulsive, or, at very least, a little bit on the strange side. As the story continues, his character becomes clearer and we are slowly given an inkling of what really goes on inside the boy's head. The way the Burnhams ignore Jane shows exactly how they expect an ideal family should behave. Following her cheerleading performance, her mother proudly tells her that she "didn't screw up once" while dad's eyes and mind get latched once again onto the blonde angel who was earlier dancing at the end of the leg-kicking row. Lester's fantasy image of Angela among a bed of deep red roses, which he vividly visualizes on his bedroom ceiling, reminds one unmistakably of the (for its time) infamous calendar portrait of Marilyn Monroe; yet another American beauty. The man who builds his body, measures his growth, and freaks out in a nostalgia of bygone days; the woman who seeks solace in the arms of another when self-improvement courses prove unsatisfactory as a solution; the beautiful girl, who feels plain and unimpressive, but is always searching for herself; the plainly beautiful girl who fools herself and pushes others into responses of adoration and lust; the man who disciplines himself and his family into a regimented life of dictatorship; the woman who escapes into a haze of illusion; the boy whose penetrating eyes retain their sharpness as he conscientiously recedes into a double-life which mimics the acceptable mold of appearances; the salesman who glides along undisturbed in a world of his own creation, believing that "in order to be successful, you must always give the impression of being successful": These are the people we watch as they frequently slide into their personal rude awakenings. The facades of the street cannot protect the facades of the lives within them. Lester befriends Ricky, or vice verse, and a parallel becomes immediately, yet subtly evident between these two. The evolution of these two men is central to the story. They are both honestly and intensively involved in a search, albeit their separately private solutions will take time to manifest themselves. The older man begins mundanely on his road to discovery while the younger one consistently dissects everything he sees in a hope to find answers. Their paths are often strewn with more thorns than rose petals. They are not dissimilar in their visions, but they are at different stages; or perhaps they are dissimilar in their visions because they are at different stages. The greatest revelation is in the description of how they feel at the moment of elation when experiencing the sense they have of beauty. The actors' performances are, without exception, perfection. Spacey (Oscar time again?), Bening, Cooper, Gallagher, Birch, and Suvari are all wonderful to watch. But a new star is born here as well. Wes Bently is incredibly intense. His eyes are piercing and deep and anyone (with a steeled constitution) could watch them for hours. Alan Ball's screenplay is so tight and well knit that it takes your breath away. The endless edges, the humor, the insight, the sharpness, the dark wit, the honest and exceptional portrayal of the unexceptional make this movie a moving experience. The roles assumed by the characters in the story are sometimes in direct opposition to the personalities buried inside them; most have qualities that are trying, if not crying, to get out. America, a land so proud of its democratic heritage, can harbor neighborhoods, as easily as any other country, with people who are desperately trying to free themselves from themselves. Director Sam Mendes has proven with his debut feature film that his abilities are not bounded by the theater. Quite the opposite, it would seem that he has creatively used his dramatic arsenal in attacking the script at hand. Already famous internationally for his stagings of Cabaret and The Blue Room, he has added one of the most interesting films of the year to his credits. Back to subtly unanswered questions in a magnificently woven script. Thinking ahead, once Lester is dead, what would the eventual consequences be upon the characters we have become familiar with, considering that solid evidence already exists for the police on a specific videotape which can easily incriminate someone? A fascinating thought to dangle before an audience. Let us all hope that no misguided producer ever gets the idea of making a sequel.
In the meantime, G-13 anyone?
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