American Beauty

AMERICAN BEAUTY

Rating: B-
Something any viewer of American Beauty must decide is whether the shortcomings of the characters in the film are confined to themselves, or whether director Sam Mendes is implying these character flaws are typical of the current American condition. Certainly, there is not a person who behaves "normally" in the entire movie - they all have their own deep-seated neuroses, ranging from pedophilia, to voyeurism, to repressed homosexuality. When the main character (Kevin Spacey) begins to rebel against the bland middle-class routine he has fallen into, his actions act as a catalyst to bring the hidden neuroses of all those around him to the surface, with explosive results.

Spacey himself begins to entertain sexual fantasies about his teenage daughter's female friend. Perhaps one of the more disturbing scenes shows him sneaking into his daughter's address book to find her friend's phone number, then calling her on the phone and getting caught. Although he redeems himself later when he suddenly sees through the girl's false sexual facade and discovers a human being underneath, audience sympathy for him can never be fully restored. So it is, too, with his wife (Annette Bening), who is so caught up in maintaining appearances of normalcy that she has little time to actually love her husband and daughter. We may feel sympathy for the trapped soul languishing underneath, but can't help thinking she's the cause of her own problems.

So the viewer is left with two alternatives: If we view the characters as being a collection of loons, the events in the film maintain our interest, but we can never fully sympathize with any of them. On the other hand, if we interpret the film as a treatise on modern American life, we're forced to question whether it's a valid portrayal or merely one skewed by overly cynical thinking. Either way, American Beauty comes close to being a good film but just misses the mark.