American Beauty

First things first:
WOW

W
O
W

That is possibly the best looking movie I have ever seen. I've never studied art or film or had any experience in recognizing what makes something look good versus what makes it look bad, but I know that that movie looked amazing. The look fit the material perfectly and when form and content match so perfectly, something very special happens. I think the hardest part in writing this review is going to be separating how wonderful it looked from other aspects that may not have been as good.

To start with the bad:
My first impression of the movie was that it was very stilted. Especially the narration by Kevin Spacey. It was jarring. His acting, especially in later parts of the movie, I have no problems with. I think he's a good actor and he proved it here. It was also a very measured film. This isn't a critique, just a statement of fact. It moved at its own pace. One of my favorite movies of all time, The Shawshank Redemption, does the same thing and the pacing is a great boon to the film. I think my favorite characters, the ones I found most interesting were Colonel Fitts, Lester Burnham and Angela Hayes. Especially the interactions between the three of them (or, more precisely, Lesters interactions with each of them).

Colonel Fitts:
To be so tortured... it strikes a chord, I think. He strikes me as very realistic. Brought up into a world of discipline, fear and intolerance, he builds his life to be disciplined and intolerant, and he lives in constant fear. This expresses itself in a fuse short enough to be set off by almost anything and overwhelming violence (which he then regrets) when his fuse does blow. The society we live in is built around fear, also, although to a lesser extent than the one of Colonel Fitts. Especially as men, we live our lives afraid of not conforming to the traditional paradigm of manliness, when the reality is that nobody conforms to it, some just play the role better than others. But I believe fear is at the heart of the vast majority of actions (and inactions) in our daily lives. Colonel Fitts exemplified this perfectly, and seeing him crack reminds us of how fragile our facades really are and, eventually, the lengths to which we will go to not let out the secret that we don't truly live up to them.

Lester Burnham:
He is the definition of a midlife crisis and I think there are many similarities between him and the Colonel. Both feel trapped inside lives they do not wish for themselves, both express this is deeply negative ways. But Lester chooses to break free from it, to reject both society and his own life, in order to make himself happy while the Colonel chooses to go to similar extremes in order to maintain his unhappiness. The last 15 minutes of this movie are so beautifully done and show the contrast between these two basically similar characters so poignantly. Lester, throughout much of the movie is very self-destructive. He gets rid of all the stereotypically 'adult' things. In becoming an adult, there are certain things society expects you to do: you go to school, get a job, buy a car, settle down and get married. And it is exactly these things that he rejects, these things not of his own making. He quits his job, he sells his car, he ceases to even pretend to care about his wife. But in doing so, he frees himself. This is akin to a trial by fire: in order to cleanse oneself one must walk through flames and burn away those things deemed unnecessary or harmful. And it pays off! At the end of the movie, he _is_ happy. The scene in the kitchen with Angela; he smiles, he's relaxed. He needed to go to the very edge of what he might want in order to identify the things he needs. And in that moment, with his ear on her breast, his midlife crisis ends. He is ready to move on. He has taken the thesis of what he was like, combines it with the antithesis of who he is and thereby synthesizes a new person, better than either of the other two. It's a Hegelian dialectic to a T. And it's beautiful to watch. I often criticize movies for happy endings, not because I have something against happiness but because the way in which happiness is achieved isn't possible in real life. It's this pseudo-happy bullshit that gets sold to us in order to make us buy movie tickets because people know they'll be happy for the rest of the day (if they're lucky) before having to go back and face their lives again the next morning. I'm proud of this movie for shying away from that, for not taking the easy way out. Lester Burnham should be damn proud of himself for finding _true_ happiness, happiness that would have lasted him the rest of his life, no matter how long it would have been.

It's also realistic that he had to die. Society cannot abide by people who will not play by its rules. We have a legal system to make sure that people don't hurt each other, but we have a much more powerful system in place in order to prevent people from _helping_ each other. In Lesters case, he had to die. Everybody allowed to live at the end of this movie was unhappy. The wife, the daughter, the friend, the boyfriend, the boyfriends father... All of them have major issues that need to be worked through. But all of them received a very clear message (although I doubt any of them understood it) that people who try and make themselves happy will not be allowed to. That, too, is realistic. And very saddening.

I feel like there's much more to say about this movie but I need more time to digest it. There will probably be an American Beauty: Part II blog entry later, but I need to think some more about how to express how I feel about this movie.

2 down, 36 to go

Edit: After writing this I watched the behind-the-scenes bonus feature and saw echoed a lot of the sentiments expressed here. That made me feel happy but I feel like there's so much more here to explore...