5 hatchets
American Beauty – even the title is enigmatic. The movie isn’t what it seems. But then again, life isn’t what it seems.
In a beautiful white house with blossoming red roses lining the premises, Lester (Kevin Spacey, Usual Suspects) and Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening, The American President) live with their teenage daughter Jane (Thora Birch, Clear and Present Danger). This is today’s suburbia – perfect on the outside, dysfunctional on the inside.
Lester and Carolyn haven’t had sex in months, maybe even years, and that is one of their more trivial problems. Jane feels no connection to her father, who leers at all of her friends, or to her mother, who makes Barbie seem real compared to her plastic smile.
Jane’s best friend, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari, American Pie), thinks being ordinary is the absolute worst thing in the world. Angela feels she is far from ordinary, which is true. She is much too narcissistic to be ordinary.
Then the Fitts family moves in next door to the Burnhams. Their family is dysfunctional, too. A retired Army man, Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper, October Sky) lives for rules and order. He smacks his son Ricky, makes him take monthly drug tests and has made a zombie of his wife. Somehow, Ricky (Wes Bentley, Beloved) turns out to be a decent boy – a little strange, but a good boy.
Ricky has a fetish for filming people, and the Burnhams, particularly Jane, have captured his attention. In a riveting film about the reality of life and how easy it is to ignore reality, you see the evolution of people through a wonderful combination of Ricky’s camera lens and the director’s.
And still, things aren’t what they seem to be.
Lester fantasizes about Angela, and, oddly enough, she likes it. Carolyn has an affair. Jane has sex with Ricky. There’s heterosexuality. There’s homosexuality. A big part of the film is sex. But then again, sex is a big part of life too.
American Beauty (Dreamworks) captures the reality of life like few films have done, and it forces you to question what is reality. On one hand, it is what is projected to others. On the other hand, it’s what you keep locked inside the colonial house with the white picket fence.
With an amazing script fraught with witty one-liners and eerily true messages, American Beauty thrives on the talent of the cast. With his cherubic smile and honest face, Spacey gives a high-caliber performance. Despite his prurient mind and peculiarities, you are drawn to him. As the neurotic real estate agent, Bening portrays the role perfectly and is the ideal complement to Spacey.
Birch, Bentley and Suvari contribute immensely to the film. Their facial expressions say more than any line in a script could. They aggressively tackle the difficult roles and give amazingly realistic performances.
All of the elements of the film fit together. Nothing seems planned or calculated. The movements of the actors, the moments of silence, the camera angles are all too real. That is the beauty of the film.
American Beauty will shock you. It will make you question reality. It will make you question yourself. The story takes an unexpected route. There are things you won’t understand, and there are things you won’t foresee. That is life.
American Beauty opens Friday.