Defending American Beauty [spoilers]

A recent repeat viewing of American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes, reminded me of some complaints about the film. Now, I'm sympathetic to complaints that the film was a bit overrated. This happens almost every year, it seems, that some film that might have been pretty good ends up annoying everyone because when Oscar season rolls around it gets puffed up far beyond its worth. (I may take a few slings and arrows, here, but I'd put Paul Haggis's Crash in this category, because, frankly, it had a few really good scenes. But it's hard to even enjoy those scenes now because so much of the rest of the film is too blatantly manipulative and ridiculously coincidental and these flaws should have utterly disqualified the film from even being nominated. And the damn thing won! See, even now, it falls further in my estimation because of its being overvalued. But I digress.)

But I'm not sympathetic to all the criticisms of American Beauty. Are these clichéd characters? Perhaps they begin this way. It might be better to call them stock characters. But the film then spins them in strange directions, and portrays them in ways we have not (often) seen before. Also, the performances are angled and pitched uniquely, and this too allows the familiar nature of the characters to be transcended. (Annette Bening does particularly vital work, as her character is one of the most thinly written, and dances the closest to caricature throughout.)

This film is not realistic? Of course not. It's extremely stylized. What's wrong with that? You expect art to be realistic? All art is stylized, it shouldn't bother you that this one wears it a little more plainly on its sleeve.

Something that hit me in the gut this time through the film was the intense tragedy of the Chris Cooper's ex-marine character, Frank Fitts. In previous viewings I've been so caught up in Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham, and his fitful efforts to find some sort of authenticity, that his death at Fitts' hand has always filled me with anger at the Fitts character. (This despite the fact that Lester tells us, in his film-opening voice-over monologue, that he will be dead very soon.) But not this time. This time I was finally able to see the deep need, the horror of having been locked down and locked away from his own desires that finally caused Fitts to snap. This final sequence is also one of the film's most brilliant twists, as we expect him to kill Lester for being involved with his son, and instead Fitts steps in out of the pounding rain to embrace Lester and then kiss Lester. Is he inspired by the courage of his son to do what he never could? Whatever the case, this is a courage he's never been able to muster before, and the kiss is not returned, is rebuffed, gently yes, but rebuffed, and now what can he do? Now the thing he has crushed down within himself his entire life is known, and we know what must now happen. Lester must be killed as the keeper of this knowledge.

And every character is the same. They're all so filled with need. Different needs, but also the same. They all need connection of some sort, and find themselves awash in a culture that would have them bury these needs under things (clothes, house, garden, car, drugs, rumors of sexual prowess). The style of the film captures this well, too, with so much focus on the surfaces (screens, cameras, mirrors, windows). In the end, all the illusions have fallen away, and this leads to violence and death, but also to freedom for some of the characters.

And even Lester finds freedom. We see the bemused smile (reflected in his own blood) on his dead face, and we feel the truth in his confession to Mena Suvari's Angela character that he is happy. He finally saw the beauty in that final second.

We should take to heart, too, the admonition to be genuine, to not be content with the surface. And more, we should also strive to savor the beauty, the beauty all around us even in the ugly things, even in the people we may write off as shallow or stock. In a culture that calls us to value the surface of things, to judge by how things look and what they can do for us, finding beauty in the other things is a subversive (holy?) act.

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Note: We'd be remiss to close without mentioning Thomas Newman's excellent soundtrack. It's brilliant, and works very hard to help the film transcend, again, the stock nature of some of its elements.