AMERICAN BEAUTY

 

ONE STAR - Destructive

 

 

       It is hard to name a sin that “American Beauty” does not include in its well-crafted plot.  Creating a world in which a seemingly normal suburban street becomes the scene of a brutal murder, we arrive at that place by walking through the experiences of lust, pedophilia, adultery, voyeurism, homosexuality, homophobia, drug addiction, drug dealing, spousal abuse, child abuse, materialism, fantasized patricide, extortion, and the ever-present gutter language.

       At times we gasped along with others at the visual images put on screen of the fantasies and activities of this subterranean suburban world.  The nervous laughter erupting in the theater at the end of the film revealed the truth that we had not been enriched by this film but degraded.

       However, it is not difficult to understand why critics are impressed with this ironic comedy.  The characters are masterfully stereotypic and their lives are excessively intertwined.  The plot is creative and unpredictable.  The stroking of emotions and the confrontations to suburban values are masterfully done.  Everyone is a voyeur, never expressing their real needs or fears.  The film’s ability to create a vicarious identification with a surreal world is both its power and its social and spiritual danger. 

       The title of the film is based on the fantasy of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey).  A lonely and sexually frustrated forty-two year old man, Lester reluctantly goes to watch his 16 year-old daughter in her cheerleading debut.

       Arriving just in time to see her half-time show, instead of watching his daughter, Lester obsesses on her beautiful friend and classmate, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari).  Her 16 year-old body entices him into a sexual fantasy that becomes a dynamic force that not only causes him to question his pathetic, empty life, but eventually leads to his death. The path to this destruction is neither solitary or singular.

       Lester’s wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening) is a woman obsessed with success.  Envious of her rival real estate agent, “King” Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher), Carolyn is seduced by his “image” and easily betrays Lester as she has a sexual affair.  Like other images of the film, their liaison is graphically shown in exaggerated pleasure.

       The interweaving of Lester’s fantasy of pedophilia and Carolyn’s adultery creates an explosive reaction within their home that impacts their daughter, Jane (Thora Birch).

       An angry, insecure teenager in need of her parent’s love, Jane is vulnerable when her next door neighbor begins to videotape her.

       Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) is a troubled, voyeuristic, eighteen year old who lives under the abusive domination of his father, a retired Marine Colonel.  Col. Fitts (Chris Cooper) has so intimidated his wife and son that his wife lives in a paranoid, semi-catatonic state, and his son, Ricky, has had to be hospitalized for such an explosive anger as a young teen that he almost killed a classmate.

       In an effort to self-medicate his seething soul, Ricky is now addicted to marijuana and lives by providing the drug to others.  He gets Lester to begin smoking with him.  As the pot begins to unravel Lester’s life, Ricky seduces Lester’s daughter, Jane.

       Using his camera as an alter-ego, Ricky shares with Jane his manic spirituality and morbid curiosity.  Watching a plastic bag circling in the winds, Ricky explains that it was in that moment that he became aware of a benevolent power that had created the world with such beauty that he could never contain it.

       This is perhaps the final irony and disappointment within the film.  In a story where there is so much unnecessary suffering from so many destructively sinful choices, the spiritual message embedded within its frames is one of empty mysticism lacking form or substance - it simply drifts in on the wind and asks nothing of its worshipers nor offers any healing for their pains.

       Although we will not reveal the mystery of Lester’s death, there is an underling message of the violence of suppressed homosexuality which so overtakes a person that they are willing to kill another.

       One of the few defenses of the morality within the film is when Lester refrains from sexually abusing Angela.  Although he does not stop because it would be immoral, or child abuse, or statutory rape, he does stop when he realizes she is a vulnerable virgin who has put a facade of sexual promiscuity upon her young soul in an attempt to deal with her own beauty and warped self-image.

       “American Beauty” is not beautiful.  This is a destructive film which engages the spirit in immoral fantasies and behaviors not worthy of the talent that created it.

      

 

(757 words)

 

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