The Academy closed out the 20th Century by awarding its highest honor to American Beauty, a film that can be interpreted in many ways. It’s not that American Beauty lacks a clear meaning, but it is about so many things, and that makes it one of the most deeply thematic films I’ve ever seen. Indeed, this film could be about finding your own voice in your life or feeling trapped in the gilded cage that is suburbia. Some films scholars have interpreted the film to be about the pressure to conform to a certain lifestyle or look. Others say the film is merely about beauty.
As I was watching it last night, I was racking my own brain to try and determine what Director Sam Mendes and Screenwriter Alan Ball (both of whom also won Oscars for their work on this film) were trying to say. As I mentioned, this is a film that is about a lot of things, but I never got the feeling that the film loses focus. I remember being a big, big fan of this film when it was first released, and I saw it multiple times, although before yesterday I hadn’t seen it for several years. What I remember most about watching it back then was how depressing I found it to be. It’s a brilliantly made film, which is all the more impressive when you remember that it was Mendes’ feature film directorial debut. What I interpreted this film to be about is the fact that nothing is as it seems, which its tagline of “…look closer” suggests.
To expand on that idea I’ll mention the two main families in the film. First, there is the Burnham family. The husband, Lester (Kevin Spacey in the role that would garner him the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role) and wife, Carolyn (Annette Benning in an Oscar nominated performance) are trapped in a largely loveless marriage and are struggling to connect with their teenage daughter, Jane (Thora Birch). Lester is stuck in a dead-end job and Carolyn is struggling to succeed as a real estate agent. However Carolyn is excellent at presenting a façade of stability, and her rosebushes are stunning, her house is immaculate. Anyone looking at this family from the outside would see a stable, well-put together family in which all of the family members seem happily engaged with each other.
The other family is the Fitts family, who moves next door to the Burnham’s at the opening of the film. Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) the only son in the family seems to be mentally unstable and is also a successful drug dealer. His father, Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) is a retired Marine Corps officer who is as bigoted as he is strict and he demands his son adhere to the rules of his house and of society, but he has no idea how to communicate with him and no appreciation for who he is. The wife, Barbara Fitts (Allison Janney) seems to have checked out emotionally and looks to be living at least part time in a reality that is alternate from our own.
Living in suburbia these two families project certain images. They look to the outside world as solid American nuclear families that have it all together when the realities of each situation are darker and much more nefarious. There is beauty to each of these families on the outside that belies the ugly reality of what is happening behind closed doors. These are both families that are on the verge of breaking up, and in fact, each family will become broken by the end of the film. As the tagline is suggesting, we are given a closer look at each family and are shown that things are not what they seem to be.
The same thing can be said about the individual characters as well. Whether it’s Col. Fitts’ homophobia masking his repressed homosexual desires, or Ricky’s distant and aloof personality masking a vulnerability that his father would never permit and his image could never sustain, or Carolyn’s type-A personality masking a deep-seeded insecurity that she’ll never measure up, there are many characters in American Beauty who are trying desperately to hide the very aspects of their respective personalities that make them human. To me the character that represents that aspect the most is Jane’s best friend, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari). Angela is the leader of the cheerleading squad and an aspiring model. She portrays herself as a sexually free individual who can use her sexuality to get what she wants out of any man she wants, even men who are older and successful. The crack in this veneer shows up relatively early when she tries to hit on Lester who was smitten with her from the first moment he saw her, and would act uncomfortably awkward whenever she was around. When he shows himself to be open to her advances, she awkwardly leaves to go find Jane. Then, at Lester’s moment of truth she has laid herself bare for him and confesses that this would be her first time. The girl that we’ve been shown to be almost sexually predatory has now been revealed to be what she really is; a vulnerable, insecure girl who has been trying to make herself appear to be more than she is. Even that attitude is ironic, since that insecurity and purity actually make her more attractive and a better person.
That leads me to Lester Burnham. One of the reasons I always found American Beauty to be so depressing is that finally at the end Lester achieves the happiness that has been eluding him, and he doesn’t even get a chance to enjoy it. He doesn’t get to live the life that he’s attained because (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!!!) he’s murdered by Col. Fitts after rejecting his sexual advances. Lester attains this happiness when it appears that he’s going to have sex with Angela until she confesses to him that she’s never had sex before. He realizes how terrible a thing it would be to take advantage of this young girl, and he helps her feel better in a deeper and more compassionate way. In doing that Lester has the epiphany that he can be a nurturing father and that he can be a good husband. He doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone else. He’s his own man, and that’s good enough. And no sooner does he reach this realization than his brains are blown all over the wall.
Now, the reason I didn’t feel depressed when I watched the film last night is because Lester reached that level of redemption in the first place. The fact that Lester achieved this redemption is the reward for following this story, and he doesn’t need to continue to live this life because the people surrounding him no longer deserve him. Lester has moved on from their petty grievances in almost a spiritual way and in this metaphorical instance, Lester moves on from this life with a redeemed soul. Personally I find that very uplifting.
There are a couple of other aspects of this film that combine to form one very impressive component to the overall production, and I’m sure that they assisted in American Beauty winning Best Picture. The Cinematography, Art Direction and Production Design on this film are thoughtfully conceived and meticulously executed in a manner that helps to progress the story and set the overall tone of the film. I’m sure you’d be happy to tell me that that’s what they’re supposed to do, and I would whole-hardheartedly agree with you. Unfortunately that’s not always what happens.
I was always impressed with the art direction, specifically Art Director David Lazan’s complete control over the color, or should I say lack thereof. Look closely at this film, and you will see that it’s essentially black and white, other than the very obvious injections of very pure red at strategic points of the film. When I watched it last night, I was watching very closely and I was particularly impressed with how little color there is throughout the film. The interiors are drab and the exteriors are as well. This is a film that goes out of its way to show that these people live in a world that is unremarkable. The world that they live in is as monotonous as their lives. Part of the credit for pulling that off also goes to Naomi Shohan and her outstanding Production Design. Neither Lazan nor Shohan were recognized by the Academy even with nominations, which is really too bad. It might sound funny to say this, and it certainly is ironic, but American Beauty and its message would not be nearly as powerful without the muted and subtle look of the film.
One person who was recognized was Cinematographer Conrad Hall. Already a well-known commodity in Hollywood, having already won an Oscar for his cinematography on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Hall also shot such memorable films as The Professionals, In Cold Blood, and The Day of the Locust among many others. He would posthumously win another Oscar three years later for Road to Perdition. It was his work on American Beauty, though, that I find particularly wonderful, as the lack of color was enhanced by Hall’s use of both shadow and space. If Lazan created a look that was primarily black and white, Hall created a film that was largely flat. Again, look at the film closely, and it takes place primarily in flat space. There is very little depth anywhere in the film, unless we’re specifically looking from Ricky’s point of view. Since his mind appears to be the deepest of the other characters, it makes sense that his POV would be where most of the depth lies. There are a few other strategically placed shots with deep space, and those come when there perspective is changing, like when Carolyn enters the house to confront Lester about buying the old muscle car, and he stands up to her in a way that he hasn’t before. Otherwise, this film shows a world that is flat in a way that compliments the art direction and production design, and shows a world that is drab, unexciting and difficult to live in.
Unfortunately time has not been kind to American Beauty. I’ve read some critics’ and historians’ takes over the last couple of days, and it does seem at the very least divisive. People either love it or hate it, and many people who used to love it have decided over time that it really wasn’t that great of a film. I will admit after watching it last night, and not having seen it for several years, that it does feel dated. It feels like the 90’s in that it was a film that was self-aware of how cool and subversive it was attempting to be, and how it was trying to take stereotypes and sacred cows to force us to “look closer” at ourselves. It seems hard to imagine, just sixteen years later, this film finding an audience in today’s movie-going culture. It isn’t exciting, and it forces the audience to pay attention not only to what’s happening in the foreground, but also what’s happening in the background and just below the surface. This is another one of those films that requires effort on the part of the viewer, and you will not care for this film if you’re not willing to put forth that effort.
Did the Academy get it right?
I believe that they did. I’m not a huge fan of The Cider House Rules, and in fact, I feel that’s a film that is far more depressing than American Beauty, but without any of the subtext. I do quite like The Green Mile, and that film evokes in me many of the same types of emotions that American Beauty did, and thematically had some of the same things going on. It was a sad, yet uplifting film that still left me feeling somewhat empty when it was over. I loved The Insider. This is the film in which Russell Crowe started to show his versatility and I thought Al Pacino’s character was an inspiration. This film also did a great job in showing the point where the news was no longer the news. Then there was The Sixth Sense. This film was more of a sensation than anything else, and the twist at the end had everyone talking. It also marked the beginning of the career of M. Night Shyamalan, and unfortunately he hasn’t been able to replicate the quality of this film since then. The Sixth Sense is actually a fine film through and through, but its Best Picture nomination was more a result of the sensation that it caused rather than the film’s quality. In looking at all of these films, I could see someone making a case for The Insider and possibly even for The Green Mile. Both of those films were well-made and had compelling stories with rich and deep characters. Those films have also held up better over the long run in my opinion. Even with that said, however, I’m still inclined to look at American Beauty as a complete package. It’s a film that is well-crafted and still very entertaining. For 1999, it was the correct choice for Best Picture.