American Beauty
I think there are few revisits that have challenged me quite like Sam Mendes’s “American Beauty.” The Best Picture winner for the 1999 movie year, the film had a cloud over it prior to rewatching it because of the recent allegations, and fall from grace, for star Kevin Spacey over allegations of sexual harassment of a younger Anthony Rapp. Would the film hold up, or would it get way too uncomfortable with this added baggage? The tagline for the film asks you to “look closer,” and the film rewards doing so.
Let’s discuss the part of the film that was in danger of aging the worst in light of Spacey’s allegations- Lester Burnham’s lusting over his daughter Jane’s sexually confident friend, Angela, played by Mena Suvari. This was always a problematic part of Alan Ball’s storyline, because it’s Lester’s fantasies, which Mendes films with cinematographer Conrad L. Hall in a way that is uncomfortable to watch, that are a big part of why he has his spiritual awakening throughout the film. A key point, however, is that Angela is completely comfortable with Lester’s lust, and even encourages it. That doesn’t make it less creepy, but it gives shading to the arc that will be resolved with Angela’s revelation in the final scenes to Lester, and Lester’s reaction to it. By that point, the characters have been revealed more fully by how others have seen them, and, for the first time in the film, they feel comfortable, and at peace, with themselves.
“American Beauty” is a movie intended to make us to make us feel uncomfortable. It wants to show us how the ways we look at life are skewed, and not entirely healthy. This is a film about two families that have not just become dysfunctional, but toxic, because of not just an unhealthy lack of communication, but because the dynamics between the parents have been thrown off by a lack of balance in their relationships with one another. It’s also about how people in these relationships try to find fulfillment and happiness, and how- if those attempts are rooted in selfish behavior- they will backfire. That last part is the overall narrative Ball and Mendes have in store for Lester (Spacey’s character) and Caroline, played by Annette Bening, as their marriage has long staled into one of convenience more than love, and throughout the film, they find ways to try and break out of it. The problem is, neither of those ways involve the other person.
While I still think Mendes and Ball’s film is a wonderful work of cinema, from a year that was chock full of wonderful cinema, I can’t say I enjoyed it quite like I did in 1999. While there’s still some sharp dark humor and entertainment in the film, I found it more painful to watch. This was one of a number of films where the main characters began to see past their normal way of viewing life, and started feeling alive for the first time. What is clear to me watching “American Beauty” now is that while its notion of numbness giving way to feeling is an important one if we’re going to make the most of life, the way we approach it, and the way we approach it through the people in our life, matters more. The marriages at the center of the film- Lester and Caroline and Colonel Fitz (Chris Cooper) and his near-catatonic wife (Allison Janney)- are toxic, and in the case of Cooper and Janney, emotionally abusive. There are clear dominant and subservient personalities at play here, but while that’s not entirely a bad thing, it’s grown into toxicity through the dominant (Caroline and the Colonel) beating down the subservient (Lester and Barbara, Janney’s character) by not really seeming to care about what they want, and only viewing life through their own prism. This was something I probably observed in 1999, but didn’t necessarily understand fully until now, because I’m more in tune to the complexities and difficulties of adult relationships. And I cannot help but feel sorry for these four, and how their lives have been made worse by their own inability to see beyond themselves.
There is one relationship that appears to be on solid ground by the end, though- the one between Jane (Thora Birch), Lester and Caroline’s daughter, and Ricky (Wes Bentley), the Fitz’s son. These two are outcasts in some of the most cliched ways films can come up with, but the thing that draws us to them is their personalities, and how grounded in reality they are. They see life in a way their parents have either forgotten about, or never did to begin with, and they become the characters we feel most comfortable with empathizing with. We want to see them break free from the dysfunction around them, and we want their parents to see how much they’ve neglected them. When the latter happens in the third act, it’s too late- the chain of events that will doom everyone’s chances for lasting happiness has already begun, and it cannot be stopped.
I will close by discussing what has always probably been my favorite thing about “American Beauty”- Thomas Newman’s score. There is a fantastic use of songs in this film, but Newman’s score is the heart of the film. It’s quirky and emotional and entertaining and heartbreaking, and it sets the tone as we hear Lester’s voice when the film starts. It continues to crush me that Newman did not win an Oscar for this film, and that he hasn’t gotten one since. Rewatching the film, I found myself in awe, once again, of the beauty and pain and heart that Newman’s music fills Mendes’s movie with.
