American Beauty (1999)
Posted by Heather on April 30, 2008
Lester Berhum (Kevin Spacey) is fed up with his monotonous suburban life and begins to fly into an whirlwind mid-life crisis. Triggered by an attraction to his daughters high school girl friend(Mena Survari), he begins to turn his life into an entirely different direction. His cheerleader daughter(Thora Birch), who is already in the midst of her own rebellion, and crazed, super witch of a wife (Annette Benning) have to deal with a father who is tampering with their perfect little vision of a family. In his own reformation, he manages to embarrass them both with his obnoxious behavior. The surprise here is the mega witch wife and contemptuous cheerleader daughter have their own dark secrets they aren’t sharing.
Lester’s wife Carolyn is busy carrying on with a dirty little affair with a fellow real estate agent she has been lusting after, Buddy Kane. (Peter Gallagher). Lester doesn’t even care, he’s busy pumping iron, smoking pot, and buying his teenage dream car, not to mention he blackmailed his boss and quit his job. When he’s not busy laying around being a bum he’s fantasizing about his daughter’s friend Angela.
The supporting cast including Angela, the object of Lesters affection, who happens to be an insecure brat of a girl, that talks down to her friend Jane, Lester’s daughter, to feed her own ego. Meanwhile, Janes attention is set to the new boy who moved next door named Ricky (Wes Bently) and they begin their own twisted relationship. Ricky seems to have a very keen outlook on the people around him and tapes peoples behavior on his video camera. He points out Angela’s cruelness as a defense mechanism. He also sees what Lester is going through, and befriends him. Not to mention, becomes his pot dealer. Ricky’s homophobic and overbearing military father(Chris Cooper) eventually finds some of Ricky’s tapes and in his own convoluted mind finds something that sends him over the edge.
The first line of the movie Lester announces he will be dead in a year, and yet somehow while watching the movie you can’t comprehend how that will actually happen until you are very close to the end. And at that end all the characters come to a head and everything explodes. American Beauty is probably one of the most complex and yet simple movies of it’s time. At a first viewing it’s almost sad, and even a little off setting, but the more often you watch this movie you realize it’s core is actually comedy. A dark, dark comedy, yes, but it’s there.
American Beauty is a timeless gem. Four out of Four stars.
