If a film begins with “American”, does that automatically make it have to be a satire of something American? I don’t really think this to be the case, but out of the two films to begin with “American”, both have ended up this way. One of them wasn’t any good, because its story made me not care that it was a satire of anything at all. The latter one was very good, excellent even, as it kept me engaged and intrigued throughout, without losing its purpose.
The latter film is titled American Beauty, and satires the American middle class system, as well as the way that both beauty and materialism is perceived through the eyes of people within this class. This is actually fairly easy to see, and yet, the film tries to hide this in a clever manner by making its characters believable enough that you want their lives and stories to be completely true.
There are many characters within the film, all of which have difficult relationships with at least two of the other characters. These problems drive the characters, and the film, forward, and make us feel emotionally connected to each one. That’s not to say all of the characters are ones you want to root for either, in fact, far from it. There are some characters, arguably the entire cast, as a matter of fact, that you will absolutely hate. That’s okay, as it was intended, and it also speaks to how well director Sam Mendes did in creating this film.
There are two main families that the film decides to focus on. The first consists of three characters, all with an incredible depth that only adds to how we will feel about them. The father, arguably the head of the household and our protagonist, is named Lester Burnham, and is played by Kevin Spacey. He isn’t enjoying growing older; he hates his job and possibly even hates the other two members of his family.
These other people are his wife and daughter, Caroyln (Annette Bening) and Jane (Thora Birch). Caroyln is an up-tight real-estate agent, unhappy with her husband and her daughter. Jane is an unhappy 16-year-old who seemingly hates everyone, starting with herself. I’d sarcastically say that they are a happy family, although that would just be cruel. These aren’t really the people you’ll want to hate–well, not unless you look into their actions more deeply, something I would encourage after viewing the film once at face-value.
I mentioned a second family earlier, and since they appear second in the film, I figured mentioning them second in the review would be fair. They also get less focus than the Burnhams, so I suppose that’s another reason for describing them second. Their house leader is Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper), a retired United States Marine Corporal. As such, he has character quirks that show through almost immediately after we meet him. It also means that he is very hard on his only son.
That son is named Ricky, and he is played by Wes Bentley. Ricky is a pot-smoking loner who, with his family of course, just moved into the home beside the Burnhams. He doesn’t have friends, so he starts filming Jane for fun. Ricky’s mother Barbara (Allison Janney), actually has a great contrast to the loud outspoken character of Frank, as she hardly says a word, and is barely seen. She’s a character that sits in the background for almost all of the film, being the complete opposite of her husband.
The plot is one that I cannot describe to you, not even the basis of it, because it doesn’t follow any real pattern. Like I said near the beginning of this review, the plot is driven by its characters and their relationships with one another, not by circumstances placed upon them from the outside world. These characters are almost excluded and shut-off from everyone else, meaning that everything they do is because of something else that either they, or another character, did.
This means that even though there are a lot of characters, we get a lot of them. We also grow to understand them and begin to judge their actions quickly. Not just in a moral way either; we begin to wonder how their actions at a certain point in time will impact them, or others, down the road, later on in the film. It gives us a deep emotional connection with most of our lead cast, a connection which only gets stronger as the film progresses.
The characters also develop throughout American Beauty. This isn’t a film where people stay fairly rigid in character. Instead, these characters change, for better or worse, with almost every scene. Whether they begin to accept themselves for who they truly are, see the world in a different light, or just stop caring about everything entirely, they will change, and you will either approve or disapprove of every single change that happens throughout.
If there is a problem with American Beauty, it’s in its actors. Now, none of them give a poor performance, far from it, but in some of the scenes where you were supposed to feel a strong emotion about what’s going on, the actors didn’t always seem to be into it. If I were to single a couple of actors out for being guilty of not showing enough emotion, they would be Brentley and Birch, who, interestingly enough, spend most of their time on-screen together.
I enjoyed American Beauty. Not just because it gave us interesting and deep characters who we become emotionally invested in, but also because its satire wasn’t bogged down by a boring story. We keep watching films to gain entertainment, first and foremost, (usually anyway, I know I’m generalizing), and American Beauty entertains, while also bringing up different ways to live your life. It’s a film that could be analyzed for hours, and one that you should definitely see if you haven’t already.