American Beauty (1999)

As I was writing this review, I was laying in bed with my girlfriend, the love of my life, on Valentine's Day, my absolute favorite holiday. We were watching a very romantic movie while drinking some exquisite wine!

The two sentences above are almost entirely bullshit. I have no girlfriend, my bed sheets were in the wash so I was on a blank mattress, I fucking hate Valentine's Day with a dying passion, I call myself the Scrooge of Valentine's Day for a reason, I was watching a movie, albeit a very anti-romantic movie, American Beauty, and I was drinking the rest of my Fireball, right out of the bottle.

It's very funny, because everything above this paragraph is the key message to the film I am about to review, the film I was watching, American Beauty, one of my all-time favorite films. Released in 1999 and directed by Sam Mendes in his theatrical debut, the film has a very star-studded cast, including Kevin Spacey (I admire his acting ability, but not him as a person, he sucks), Annette Bening, Thora Birch, a young Wes Bentley of The Hunger Games (2012), Mena Suvari, Peter Gallagher (who was in a really shitty romance movie 20 years after this film, called After (2019), if you want me to review that movie and its sequels, shoot me a request!), pre-Oscar-winning Allison Janney, pre-Oscar-winning Chris Cooper, and Scott Bakula. John Cho also has a cameo in this film, watch out! This film won several Academy Awards, Including a second win for Spacey, Best Director for Mendes, and even Best Picture.

The film begins unusually, with a grainy camera recording a scantily-clad girl, Jane (Birch). She complains about her father and a male voice behind the camera (Bentley) asks if she wants him to kill her father. She says yes. The real camera then pans over a nice suburban neighborhood. Our protagonist, Lester Burnham (Spacey), a 42 year old man, is narrating. He reveals that he will be dead in less than a year. We see his life, which is very sad and mundane. He jerks off in the shower in the morning, his wife, Carolyn (Bening), and his teenage daughter, Jane, who we saw in the beginning, think lowly of him (in his words, they think he's a "gigantic loser," a sentiment with which he agrees), and the family of three are generally unhappy with their lives and each other.

A really amazing subtle detail in the film is the first shot of Lester at his generic office cubicle job. Lester's reflection is shown through his computer monitor, which has several lines of code down it. The lines of code give the appearance that he is in jail. He is trapped in this mundane, unsatisfying life with a wife and daughter who don't respect him, a job which he dislikes and is fully aware of the extremely unethical practices of his bosses.

Meanwhile, new neighbors move next door, the Fitts'. They are also a family of three, except with a son, Ricky, the voice from the beginning. Ricky has an obsession with recording random things, including dead animals. He finds beauty in just about everything. His home life is also not pleasant. His father, Frank (Cooper), a retired Colonel in the Marines, is demanding and outright homophobic. His mother (Janney), is very submissive and borderline catatonic. Ricky is also a drug dealer on the side, selling pot to various people, one of whom is eventually Lester. Ricky also falls hard for Jane, who later reciprocates the feelings.

One night, Carolyn drags Lester to a basketball game to watch Jane's cheerleading performance. He doesn't spend any time watching his daughter and is instead fixated on her friend, Angela (Suvari), an aspiring model who constantly brags to Jane about her sexual encounters. This sparks a change in Lester. He has fantasies involving Angela and rose pedals, starts buying pot from Ricky after he meets him at a convention Carolyn drags him to, begins to work out after hearing Angela say that she'd fuck him if he worked out more, begins lashing out at Carolyn's complaints about him, deliberately gets himself laid off before blackmailing his boss into giving him a handsome severance package, gets a job at a fast food joint, and trades in his car for a vintage sports car. Carolyn also begins making changes with herself. After facing stiff competition in the real estate business from the so-called "King of Real Estate," Buddy Kane (Gallagher), she speaks with him at the convention and the two begin an affair. Lester later discovers this affair, which devastates Carolyn when Lester reveals that he simply doesn't care.

My favorite scene in this movie might surprise anyone who has seen it. It is the scene after Jane shares a kiss with Ricky. Jane comes to dinner late where Lester lets her know that he has left his job. Carolyn acts extremely sarcastic the entire dinner as Lester asks for the asparagus multiple times. He eventually gets up and gets it himself after an argument with Carolyn and after snapping at Jane. He begins to scold both of them about how they treat him before Carolyn interrupts him. He responds by simply standing up and throwing the plate of asparagus at a wall before calmly telling her to not interrupt her. He also says that music during dinner will now be alternated instead of Carolyn's music being constantly played. This scene is such a sharp contrast to an earlier dinner scene which was rather quiet, Lester was the one being sarcastic, Jane complained about the music, and Lester also only mumbled insults to Carolyn rather than directly telling her it. The second dinner scene shows that he is no longer passive towards either of them.

Everyone has a secret in the film. With the Burnham's, it's obvious. They pretend to be a happy, picture-perfect middle-class family. They aren't. Jane hates her parents and her parents are in a very unhappy marriage. Ricky's secret is that he's a pot dealer on the side, unbeknownst to his parents, especially his father. However, because I encourage all of you to watch this film, I want you to discover the secrets of the other characters. See why I lied in the opening sentences?

This film is amazing. The acting in particular is superb. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening kill it in their roles. Jane and Ricky are both rather emotionless, but that's the point of their characters', they are different from everyone else. The story is simple, yet secretly brilliant. The film has numerous secret and hidden references to the film and book Lolita (1962). The award-winning cinematography is also excellent, especially during the scenes of Lester's fantasies. I could watch this film again and again. Please watch it if you ever get a chance. I rate this film EXCEPTIONAL on the rating scale.