Trans-Atlantic
flights suck. If you think riding the bus to work, or sitting through Armageddon are exercises in tedium, well, brother, you
haven't felt tedium 'till you've sat on a plane for 8 hours.
At least they had a good movie to watch.
No, strike that, they had a great movie to watch. Because, brother, you ain't seen much if you haven't seen American Beauty.
Dark, satirical, sick, humorous, foul mouthed, oddly beautiful, starring Kevin Spacey, and featuring teenage breasts, American Beauty is my kind of drama. Exploring the twisted insanity of "normal" American life, the movie is so damn good it can make you forget your surroundings and suck you into the world it presents. Not matter how disturbed that world may look.
Jeez, between this and Good Will Hunting one might think I'm actually giving the Oscars some play. Don't worry, they still suck. But at least their taste seems to be improving.
American Beauty is the story of how Lester (Spacey), an every day American loser who turned his life around by having sexual fantasies about his daughter Jane's (Thora Birch) best friend, Angela (Mena Suvari). It may sound sick, and it kinda is, but we'll get to that in a minuet.
Anyway, as the movie opens, Lester is trapped in a loveless marriage, and a dead-end job, raising a daughter who would, if told about his death, would probably shrug, if she even bothered to waste that much energy. One day, spying Angela at a basketball game, Lester suddenly realizes all of this, and embarks on a last ditch effort to better himself.
It is the hilarious ways he goes about this that make up the bulk of the movie. And while that is going on the rest of his family embarks on (*ahem*) affairs of their own. His wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) with a real estate agent, and Jane with the boy next door, Ricky (Wes Bentley) one of the strangest characters I've ever seen. Constantly filming "beautiful" things with his camera and wearing a bemused expression on his face no matter what he's looking at (be it breasts or dead bodies), Ricky is . . . an enigma. And I like enigmas.
Racking up 5 awards (and disserving more) the movie gets you right in the gut, both with its dystopian picture of typical life and its warmth. And, yes, it does have a surprising amount of warmth and sensuality to it. Lester's fantasies are some of the best scenes in the movie. So it has breasts. Big fucking deal, they're essential to the story. And if you're hung up on that, you've missed the point.
I'm to jet lagged now to force myself to remember another movie that had such a weird collection of characters. Or, for that matter, a movie that made them all work. Lester, with everything he does, is the most stable guy in the show. And that's a bad thing, trust me. The world of American Beauty is dotted with homophobes (Ricky's dad, played by the great Chris Cooper), the apathetic (Jane), the amoral (Angela) and the just plain weird (Ricky). But screenwriter Alan Ball never turns these people into stereotypes, just people.
Kevin Spacey is one of the great dramatic actors of our time, and here he does what he does best: say, "Fuck you," to almost everyone on screen. I'd watch this guy play the most evil man in America, but I doubt he'd be cast in The Roger Ebert Story. Mores the pity.
Annett Bening brings a weird sort of normalcy to her character. I know I shouldn't like Carolyn, yet somehow I do. That's the power of good acting, right there.
Thora
Birch and Wes Bentley may look trapped in that old stereotype (apathetic teens are a
stereotype now, thanks be to Daria) before we get to know them, and the depths of
their characters. Both are scarred by their screwball parents, both are unhappy with life,
and both seek some sort of escape. Plus both actors have a screen presence that's as
magnetic as a black hole.
Hold on to your sneakers, here comes the gush paragraph. The one where I tell you that this movie has great writing, and spectacular casting. Where I say that this movie is engrossing with its humor and its humanity. Where I tell you that this movie can make two hours seem like two minuets, cure cancer, and give might even prevent smog and cause world peace.
But this movie also has something special. That special little something that makes me give it my all. Go see it, man, because it's never to late to turn your life around.
