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"American Beauty" and delight in the ordinary
By Steve Lansingh
"American Beauty" is likely to be one of the most talked about movies this year. Just one year after Roberto Benigni's Holocaust fable that suggested that, despite the horror of the Holocaust, life is beautiful, comes the film debut of stage director Sam Mendes that suggests that life is beautiful because of the horror and randomness. Is it a movie of hope or a movie of nihilism? Are we supposed to laugh at who we are or cringe at who we are? Should these characters receive our condemnation or our pity?
My guess is that this film serves as a litmus test of who you are rather than putting forth any specific conclusion to absorb. The closest thing it makes to a value statement, I believe, is to assert that your attitude determines the way the world seems to you; I think "American Beauty" is purposefully vague about any other value judgments so that, ultimately, the way the movie seems to you also depends on your attitude. Pretty sly, eh? Those who are predisposed to see movies as instigators of flimsy morality will see this film as one of the worst offenders; those who believe that art can be a window into our spiritual selves will find the film one of the most illuminating.
"American Beauty" follows a very 1990s suburban family. Lester (Kevin Spacey), the father, is an emasculated man whose wife makes more money than him, who is considered expendable at a job he's worked at for 14 years, can't communicate with his teenage daughter, and in general has "never felt so ... sedated." Carolyn (Annette Bening), the mother, is just as distant from their daughter, is consumed with Martha Stewart-ish appearances of perfect, and an ambitious real-estate saleswoman who lapses into crying fits where she slaps herself and calls herself "weak!" Jane (Thora Birch), the daughter, is a sullen, disaffected teenager who hates her parents, her friends, her body ... well, pretty much everything. On the outside, they're the perfect American family with the white picket fence, but inside, they're rotting.
This premise isn't particularly novel. "Pleasantville" had a similar set-up -- soulless people leading pretty lives. But while the insipid "Pleasantville" suggested that pleasuring oneself (both in the sense of being selfish and in the sexual sense) was the path to wholeness, "American Beauty" finds Lester's turn toward selfishness and sexual obsession the destructive force it can be. Lester decides he's not going to play nice anymore, not keep up the appearances of happiness, and it only spins him into deeper peril. While "Pleasantville" extols the virtues of American individualism, "American Beauty" shows its ugliness. Of course, it also shows the ugliness of forced community, where everyone has to live behind masks, without honesty.
Certainly this could be seen as a kind of nihilism, a hopelessness. So could the lack of any upstanding characters -- the one with the most moral backbone is a peeping-Tom drug dealer, the next-door neighbor, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bently). But I don't think that's what the movie is saying. I think it's saying that all of humanity is flawed, that there's no perfect social system for us to co-exist in, that we cannot save ourselves ... BUT then it asks where we should turn. The answer comes in Ricky's peeping sessions, in which he videotapes the goings-on next door. The dull colors and grainy picture on videotape is in stark contrast to the lush colors and perfect lighting supplied in the rest of the film by legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall. With Carolyn's immaculate household de-emphasized by graininess, and with the sound of conversations often blocked out, the scenes become more generic, and thus more timeless. We see a father and daughter going through the arguments and emotions that fathers and daughters have been going through for centuries, and yet you're aware that you're seeing this particular scene the only time it is to be played. Compassion seems to leap out more readily for the blurry people on videotape than for the beautiful people in a perfect house. A plate of flying asparagus is more interesting than the vases full of perfect roses from Carolyn's garden. The wrinkled faces of Spacey and Bening, in which you can read years of experience and worry and joy and heartache, are more captivating than the youthful blandness of Lester's fantasy girl (Mena Suvari). The tension in this movie is between what is pretty and what is interesting, and for Ricky, it is in the interesting and unusual that he finds "the eye of God staring at him."
Everywhere in "American Beauty" there are contrasts between pretty appearances and naked beauty. An efficiency expert is brought into Lester's company to make the firings seem more diplomatic but "less honest," says Lester. Carolyn insists on putting on a perfect front when she attends a real-estate convention with her husband. Jane is saving up money to get breast implants, but later comes to see beauty in herself. Carolyn tries to convince potential buyers that a swimming pool can be "lagoon-like" instead of the cement hole that it is. Gorgeous fantasies in Lester's head turn into true beauty when played out in reality. Ricky finds Jane's ordinariness beautiful and finds Jane's beautiful friend ordinary.
Like I said at the outset, I believe this movie is a litmus test of sorts, because the reaction I had to the film is an art fan's reaction. While most of life is centered around putting on masks and erecting walls and making nice, art is about exposing life naked, being truthful about what we experience. The seed for this belief was probably planted in me by a great scene in Chaim Potok's novel "My Name Is Asher Lev." Asher's mother asks her artist-prodigy son to draw pretty, sweet things instead of "twisted shapes, swirling forms, in blacks and reds and grays." When she falls ill later the young Asher brings such a drawing to her:
I think the real genius of "American Beauty" is that while it supports my interpretation, it doesn't necessarily preach it. The film does a good job of simply telling its story and letting the audience decide what to make out of it. The scene where Lester takes a job as a fast-food clerk may strike one person as a hilarious incongruity, another person as Lester's darkest and most selfish moment, and still another as an inspiring scene where Lester is unshackled from adult status symbols. When Lester throws asparagus against the wall and starts an argument with his wife, one person might see Lester's freedom to speak his mind, another might see him as having gone mental, and another might cringe in embarrassment for Jane at being caught in the middle. This is as far you can get from the clear-cut heroes-and-villains fare that most of us grew up with. By making no character someone to look up to and every character someone you can empathize with, "American Beauty" asks a lot more of you, asks you to come face to face with who you really are.
"Here are the birds and flowers, Mama."
She blinked her eyes.
"I made the world pretty, Mama."
She turned her head away and closed her eyes.
"Mama, aren't you well now?"
She did not move.
"But I made the world pretty, Mama."
Still she did not move.