Some of my most recent reviews have been very negative. As I have also bemoaned the lack of quality in many TV programmes and complained that too many merely set out to undermine people and their achievements I felt I was doing that which I most criticise. I will seek to redress this balance by describing some thing that is truly excellent. A film whose mere presence makes the world a better place.
American Beauty is such a film. For a directors first movie to be such an absorbing spellbinding production is amazing. The film has the feel of a number of cinematic gods who have combined, used all the known wisdom gathered over a century of film making, and produced a near perfect film. Sam Mendes deserves every honour he has gained from this film.
The story is told is a comparatively simplistic way, there is no deviation from the view that this is a well written story. The story itself is not simple and has a number of complexities in story and character which draw you in to the world that has been created. The view is of normal suburban American life, the actions and
consequences credible and believable, the emotions familiar to anyone who truly lives in our world rather than merely exists in it. This is a film capable of making you look around the cinema, the street, your home afterwards and see things a new way. It is that powerful a film.
On the surface the film revolves around Lester Burnham who is married to Carolyn And they have a teenage daughter Jane. They remained married almost in name only and their relationship is collapsing. While Carolyn seeks fulfilment in her real estate business Lester feels a failure trying to be a telephone salesman. Jane like many teenagers does not understand or like her father. Lester quits his well paid job to work in a fast food joint and Carolyn has sex with her main rival (Buddy Kane) whom she considers to be a triumphant success.
But the main changes in their lives come about when Lester meets Angela Hayes a blonde seductive teenage fantasy figure who he meets when she appears as a cheerleader with Jane at a college basketball game. Meantime the Fills family move in next door comprising the strange drug taking son Ricky, his anxious mother Barbara and certifiably mad army fixated father Colonel Fills.
What undoubtedly helps make it such a good film is the extraordinary performances by the cast in what are fairly ordinary lives. Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham is the first example. His performance is simply fantastic. His transformation from unfit, unhappy, bored husband to a man totally at one with his new life is a marvel. His interactions in the film with his daughter and with Angela Hayes have a vibrant charm about them. Annette Bening is a marvel too as Carolyn Burnham. She carries the desperate need of Carolyn to be successful selling a house and the ultimate failure superbly. Her brief affair with Buddy Kane is also brilliantly done. Peter Gallagher is well cast as Kane making him sleazy and charmless.
Thora Birch plays Jane Burnham and excellent she is too. Jane is horrified at some of her fathers behaviour and turns to Ricky Fills for affection. The development of the relationship of these two is well done. Ricky Fills is played by Wes Bentley. Fills has a past which involves drugs but also an odd relationship with his father who seems incapable of any affection for those around him. It is Ricky though who first introduces the concept of how beautiful life actually is when you look for that real beauty. His views influence not only Jane but Lester too. Bentley plays this role to perfection being at first disturbing, then sympathetic and finally odd again.
Rickys parents are played by Alison Janney as repressed mom Barbara and a menacing violent Chris Cooper as Colonel Fills. Colonel Fills is a man turned into a hateful psychopath by his army days and he has a hatred of gays. His suspicion that his son may have had gay sex is a turning point in the film.
Without question though the greatest performance comes from Mena Suvari as Angela Hayes. Hayes is first seen as a spoilt sexual predator fully aware of her effect on men and aware of her apparent physical beauty. As the film goes on though we see her as a vulnerable child who is not beautiful in the sense of her sexual attractiveness but as a person. The sublimely subtle way the film changes the focus of the viewers perceptions of people, of beauty and of life itself is joyous. Full marks to Sam Mendes and to Alan Ball who wrote the screenplay.
I did mention that this film was nearly perfect, so where is the flaw? My only minor gripe is its reliance on the use of Rickys camera to film into the Burnhams house. I cannot help wondering how much less of a story it would have been if the Burnhams kept their curtains closed.
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The Directors cut is even better, I saw a screening of it at the London film festival. It was edited to how you see it in the regualar video because American audiences weren't considered clever enough to understand the ending. Great opinion.
From its first gliding aerial shot of a generic suburban street,American Beautymoves with ... more
a mesmerising confidence and acuity epitomised by Kevin Spacey's calm narration. Spacey is Lester Burnham, a harried Everyman whose midlife awakening is the spine...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
From its first gliding aerial shot of a generic suburban street,American Beautymoves with ... more
a mesmerising confidence and acuity epitomised by Kevin Spacey's calm narration. Spacey is Lester Burnham, a harried Everyman whose midlife awakening is the spine...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Marking the feature film directorial debut of award-winning theatre director Sam Mendes ... more
this funny moving and shocking journey through life in suburban America follows the trials and tribulations of Lester (Kevin Spacey) and Carolyn (Annette Bening) ...
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Look closer at the most talked about film of the year. A funny, moving and shocking ... more
journey through life in suburban America.Look closer at fortysomething ad man Lester Burnham and his status-seeking wife, Carolyn, as their marriage and lives slowly un...
![American Beauty [DVD] [2000]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78526734.jpg "American Beauty [DVD] [2000]")
Nov 23rd, 2001
very helpful by (100%):
