American Beauty digs into the decaying fabric of the American society...very shallow , skin deep and meaningless. All that’s seen on the exterior is not actually so..yet everything is SO predictable.
American Beauty is a deep movie which delves into the psyche of the American society: selfish yet vulnerable, ambitious yet fearful of failure, portrayal of success through make believe life styles, smiles through sorrow...in short What you SEE is’nt what it IS... In the depths lie the sorrow, frustration, failure, loveless existence, making do with the easy way out Man is shown twisted, turned and flown about like a flimsy plastic bag on a windy evening. In fact this shot is beautifully filmed. Round and around, here and there, yet back where it belongs. Nowhere to go...tied down by circumstances...that’s life!
All this is portrayed through the members of a family; Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), his wife and their only child, a teenaged daughter. Kevin Spacey is an Ad man, going through mid-life crisis (you can get a good peek into his privacy through the glass door of his bath). Afraid of losing position, he even stoops to blackmail. Finally ends up serving at Smileys. He has no qualms about anything and goes about nonchalantly and arrogantly about all things in life, including lusting for his daughter’s friend. He finally almost beds her and you have another peek of young nudity. He has not only lost his job, but his moral balance too. He takes to drugs and pumping iron as a time filler, striving to get back his youth and for lack of anything else/better to do. Frustration, degeneration.
His wife Carolyn, very well portrayed by Annete Bening goes through her share of frustration in her endeavours, lack of appreciation and companionship at home, yet keeps up a false front of happiness and laughter in public. Eventually she ends up into an extra-marital affair, which too is a farce.
Marriage holds no sanctity or meaning to either of them anymore. Their only interest is to flaunt loopholes in the legal fabric of marriage and hurl challenges at each other to prove grounds for divorce. In such a collapsing homefront, is caught their young daughter Jane (Thora Birch), torn between right and wrong, in search of sanity and peace, finally doing the most predictable thing ---falling into the open arms of the boy next door Rick (Wes Bently), a peeping tom and a drug peddler whom she earlier detested.
The Voyeur too has a story to tell, which involves his dictator father, passive mother... Suffice it to say, the ties between close ones come apart. In fact everything about the film is so very predictable. Even Kevin Spacey’s fantasy Angela (Mena Suvari), the rose petalled teenager friend of his daughter, who teases men and pretends to be worldly wise and alluring, is in fact ’’ordinary and boring’’ in the words of the Voyeur.
A great film, with never a moment’s boredom. American Beauty is a film of today’s reality, problems, pressures, competition, broken homes which make for the psyche of today’s generation.