AMERICAN BEAUTY
by Sam Mendes

Film review by Ken Weavers

As the laconic voice of a dead man, speaking from the grave with an ironic but irrefutable wisdom, begins the story of his own short unhappy life, in an opening borrowed from Billy Wilder’s masterpiece Sunset Boulevard, so American Beauty magnetises its audience into wanting to know how this man lived and died. Not until the astonishingly moving, climactic finale, that leaves one paralysed in one’s seat for some minutes, does the attention subside, in what must be one of the finest and most genuine films to come from Hollywood in many a year.

This is a tale of the malaises of inter-millennium suburban life in the Western world, and the problem for the contemporary person of leading a meaningful life. Here is a man utterly trapped in a place where he has drifted, the classical ‘normal’ existence, where everyone is supposed to find happiness without effort. He is a man of character and spirit, but this has remained dormant for many years, since he fell in love with his wife and felt the joy of their one child who, by the time the film starts, is already an estranged, unfriendly and ill-mannered teenage girl. His sleep-like existence, amid a seriously dysfunctional family unit, is finally awoken by fortuitous circumstance, which later contrives to bring about his downfall. But there are many threads to this tale, many lives around the protagonist’s going through change, characters burdened by hypocrisy, monotony, and self-image, who by their interactions are awoken, more or less, from their stupor, into a world of self-discovery, innovation, comedy, romance, sorrow, joy, tragedy – but at least it is living, not just existing. This is why the ultimate tragedy of the story still leaves one curiously uplifted, sensing there is a way to live, to contact one’s inner self, despite everything, come what may.

The casting, acting and direction of the six main characters is quite flawless. Kevin Spacey plays the hero with sheer aplomb, while Annette Bening excels herself as his carping, worldly wife. Thora Birch, the embittered daughter, Mena Suvari, her sexy but ultimately insecure friend, Wes Bentley, with the most difficult part as the strange boy next door who catalyses the action with his calmly uncompromising candidness, and Chris Cooper, playing his deeply disturbed father, all give inspiring performances. The story meanwhile is complex, unexpected, and gripping. By the ploy of giving away the hero’s untimely demise without saying how it happens, suspense is maintained without distracting from the essential themes by creating a shock-effect.

There is an incidental sub-theme of sixties music that intersperses the disturbingly hypnotic soundtrack, and underpins many of the crucial scenes. Hendrix, Dylan, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, the Beatles and others are there perhaps to remind us that it was in the sixties that the greatest changes in society of recent years took place, when many revered standards became despised or forgotten, while hedonism became a norm. Did we perhaps throw away something worthy among all those old hypocrisies? It is interesting that the title of the film is borrowed from that of one of the Grateful Dead’s best albums.

Sam Mendes, a British director making his début, has made a film of which two of cinema’s greatest directors, Billy Wilder, who made many films ironically questioning the assumptions of the twentieth century, and Michael Powell, who, with Peeping Tom, was reviled for facing up to the darker side of human nature, would have been proud. Like them, Mendes does not shrink from portraying the many vices and problems with which modern humanity has to contend: drug use and trafficking, adultery, breast enhancement, the use of guns and violence, masturbation, infatuation, voyeurism, homosexuality and homophobia, suppressed emotions and heartless big-business. Despite the title, these all apply as much in contemporary Britain as in America.

Can one feel optimistic after seeing this film? Should one infer that ugly monotonous lives such as these cannot go on till death consumes them because the whole thing is fragile, easily upset by one person’s awakening? Will we one day in the future look back and say, "this is how badly people used to function in the old days"? I cannot answer these questions, but for me the lingeringly familiar words of Neil Young, sung during one of the film’s most tender moments, seem significant:

"It’s only castles burning,

Just find someone who’s turning,

And you will come around."