FotM: American Beauty - Best Picture 1999

I debated about whether or not writing about American Beauty was the best idea. I really did. For starters, I hadn’t seen the film until last year, and, while I’ve been meaning to watch it again, seeing a film once doesn’t exactly give me the level of confidence I’d like before getting in-depth on it in an article like this. That said, the reason I decided to do this is because I am hard-pressed to think of a film in recent memory that has affected me like American Beauty has. I’ve said enough in the past about my feeling about “experience movies,” so I don’t intend to bore you with a repeat of that little soapbox speech.

It’s ironic, because I can clearly remember when the film was in cinematic release in 1999, otherwise known to all “normal,” well-adjusted individuals as the year of the return of Star Wars. I used to pick up this little movie newsletter at the grocery store and I clearly recall American Beauty being advertised in it. I can even remember the picture that was in the advertisement. As you might guess, for a 14 year old kid growing up in a conservative household, it was not tops on my “must watch” list. At the time, we didn’t watch R-rated films, so that ruled it out automatically. Additionally, the amount of flesh on the poster seemed positively scandalous to me. I remember one of my esteemed co-writers for this blog telling me in high school, “I have no interest in seeing a film about a man going through a mid-life crisis.” Boy, did we have the wrong idea.

Anyway, times change and, last year, I watched American Beauty for the first time. I found myself amazed at the film’s ability to both supersede my expectations and bypass my preliminary responses to it while I was watching it. The tonal shift that occurs in the film is second to none. The tagline that appears on the film’s poster, “Look closer,” is the key to understanding American Beauty. Talk about the answer being in plain sight.

On the surface, the film’s characters are broad stereotypes of people that we’ve all either had personal experience with, have talked to people who have personal experience with similar people, or know people who know still other people who’ve known people like that. Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is the grown-up teenager in midlife crisis. Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening) is the controlling housewife with everything in its right place and matching gardening accessories. Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) is the high school slut who won’t stop talking about all the guys she’s bagged. Col. Fitts (Chris Cooper) is the homophobic next door neighbor who thinks the world ought to be rewound to 1955 and won’t stop talking about it. I think you get the idea.

Some have accused American Beauty of containing nothing but caricatures, as though these generalized characters and the situations that they find themselves in lean toward broad statements about American suburban life that become the sole thing that the film is trying to say about that life. I tend to disagree. While the film has many aspects that appear formulaic at first glance, it does one thing that so many, if not most, films with stereotypical characters fail to do. After establishing those conventions, American Beauty sidesteps them in one fell swoop with one of the best third acts of any film that I’ve seen. Almost every single character is proven to have depths that the audience never dreamed existed. These previously hidden facets grab us by the throat and refuse us the luxury we have grown accustomed to when dealing with stereotypical people and stereotypical situations. We are no longer allowed to dismiss these people because we think we know everything there is to know about them because of the label they wear. Instead, we are forced to think of them as real people, which is what they deserved all along.

The biggest mystery of American Beauty is how it achieves such a sense of grace and beauty when it ends. We’ve known all along that Lester is going to die. He said as much at the beginning of the film. The film is fascinating in the way it moves and changes from a twisted, disturbed, creepy look at American suburban life into a meditation on life, love, and the things that make both of them worthwhile. We may have known how it would end, but I dare anyone to say that they’d figured out the twists and turns that would bring American Beauty to its breathtaking climax. I've seen a lot of films in my life, but the climax of American Beauty ranks as one of the most moving of any I've seen.

The 2000 Academy Awards were hosted by Billy Crystal and held at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium. The nominees for Best Picture were American Beauty, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, and The Sixth Sense. In addition to winning the top prize, American Beauty won Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Actor (Kevin Spacey), Best Original Screenplay (Alan Ball), and Best Cinematography (Conrad L. Hall), winning a total of 5 Academy Awards out of 8 nominations. You won’t be surprised to learn that I believe that the right film won that year. I’d also argue that Annette Bening should have won Best Actress over Hilary Swank for Boys Don’t Cry. Here’s the real kicker: Sam Mendes and Alan Ball had never worked on a motion picture before, and THIS was the result. American Beauty is a modern classic that I’ll go back to again and again for the rest of my life. Those films don’t come along very often. I am very, very grateful that this one did.