Spencer Review of American Beauty
For those who have not seen the film, the scene is simple -- a white plastic bag is caught in the wind in front of the kind of graffittied metal doors that come down at night in front of liquor stores in tough neighborhoods. The scene is shot in slow motion. The bag goes up and down and left and right and around and around. It could be a bird, or a butterfly, or a cloud. But it's not. It's a piece of litter on a dirty street. And as such it's a metaphor that even in the toughest place, and perhaps most often in tough places, beauty happens.
Ball answered the question directly, with no emotion. He said that he wanted a scene of grace to balance out the heaviness of the other scenes, to provide a quiet moment. "I tried to think of the most beautiful thing I had ever seen," he said. For him, it wasn't some schmaltzy sunset in Hawaii. He remembered walking past the World Trade Center at a timein his life when he was working as the art director at a magazine, and writing plays at night for a theater company that was disintegrating. Most of the people in the theater company were hitting their mid-30s and moving on. He felt a little stuck. A plastic bag was caught on the wind and it seemed to float around him, as if it were a specter, as if it were alive and talking to him. There was something so profound in the simple beauty of the moment, he said, that it brought him to tears.
"As children we come into the world with eyes that are wide open and we can see beauty in the most surprising places and the miraculous in the mundane, and that gets sort of conditioned out of us as we are socialized," Ball said. "But there was something about the poetry of that bag in the wind. The lyricalness of it was incredibly overwhelming to me on that particular day. I think there is a part of us that longs for that way of seeing the world. I think that's what people talk about really when they talk about the loss of innocence. So just to be reminded of that, and that it still exists within all of us is very moving to people. Because it's so easy to be so cynical."
Edelstein, American Beauty as New Age Nihilism
But do the filmmakers take them straight? If I read it correctly, the movie is saying that American society is unjust and absurd and loveless--full of people so afraid of seeming ordinary that they lose their capacity to see. It's saying that our only hope is to cultivate a kind of stoned aesthetic detachment whereby even a man with his brains blown out becomes an object of beauty and a signpost to a Higher Power. But to scrutinize a freshly dead body and not ask how it got that way--or if there's anyone nearby with a gun who might want to add to the body count--strikes me as either moronic or insane or both. The kind of detachment the movie is peddling isn't artistic, it isn't life--it's nihilism at its most fatuous. In the end, American Beauty is New Age Nihilism.
Berardinelli, American Beauty as the Darkness in the Suburbs
Over the years, many films have taken a dark look at the supposedly perfect ideal of a white picket fence, a little house, and a nuclear family. For many, the suburban life is the American dream. For others, however, it can turn into a twisted nightmare of unfulfilled desires, repressed needs, and shattered hopes. Because of the necessity to keep up appearances, a serene facade often conceals a breeding ground for dysfunction, anxiety, and hypocrisy. Directors like David Lynch have made this their playground. ( See Lynch's Blue Velvet, 1986 ) Lynch in particular delights in depicting the root causes of social decay in suburbia - and he does it by autopsy. American Beauty is not as dark as a Lynch project, since it allows for small moments of redemption, but it mines the same general territory.
Turan, American Beauty and the Hollow Space behind the American Dream
"American Beauty's" subject is the hollow space behind the American dream, the frustrations that hide under the perfectly mannered surfaces of our lives. "Never underestimate the power of denial," one character says, but in some ways what we're shown is not the power but the price of denial, how a world without moorings, without honesty, without human connections turns everyone into a lost soul on the verge of a self-centered psychotic breakdown.
Lester certainly fits that description when he takes us on a voice-over tour of his life. The first stop (and, he coolly informs us, the high point of his day) is Lester masturbating in his morning shower before putting in his time at a trade magazine called Media Monthly. His wife and daughter, Lester says, consider him "this gigantic loser," and, not really disagreeing, he tells people who've forgotten they've met him, "I wouldn't remember me either."
The Clinton Impeachment and the Lewinsky Scandal
American Beauty and The Graduate
"American Beauty is one of those rare, penetrating movies that peers so deeply into the façades of perfection to uncover hideous scars that it rivals a masterpiece such as The Graduate."
-- Barbara Lester, SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL
Ricky on God and Beauty
Ricky discussing the filming of a dead homeless woman:
Ricky Fitts : I was filming this dead bird.
Angela Hayes : Why?
Ricky Fitts : Because it's beautiful.
Ricky Fitts : It's like God's looking right at you, just for a second, and if you're careful... you can look right back.
Jane Burnham : And what do you see?
Ricky Fitts : Beauty.
Ricky Explains the Bag Scene
Ricky Fitts : It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.
Lester's Dead America Life at 42
Lester Burnham : My name is Lester Burnham. This is my neighborhood; this is my street; this is my life. I am 42 years old; in less than a year I will be dead. Of course I don't know that yet, and in a way, I am dead already.
Lester Burnham : [ narrating ] Both my wife and daughter think I'm this gigantic loser and they're right, I have lost something. I'm not exactly sure what it is but I know I didn't always feel this... sedated. But you know what? It's never too late to get it back.
Lester on Jane's and His Life
Lester Burnham : [ narrating ] Janie's a pretty typical teenager. Angry, insecure, confused. I wish I could tell her that's all going to pass, but I don't want to lie to her.
Why won't Carolyn Divorce Lester
Carolyn Burnham : Don't you mess with me, mister, or I'll divorce you so fast it'll make your head spin!
Lester Burnham : On what grounds? I'm not a drunk, I don't fuck other women, I've never hit you, I don't mistreat you... I don't even try to touch you since you've made it so abundantly clear how unnecessary you consider me to be! But I did support you when you got your license, and some people might think that entitles me to half of what's yours. So, turn off the light when you come to bed!
Lester Describes the Moment of Death as a Revelation
Lester Burnham : [ narrating ] I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time... For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars... And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street... Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper... And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird... And Janie... And Janie... And... Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.
Lester on the Sofa as Stuff
Lester Burnham : This isn't life, it's just stuff. And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts.
Lester on Losing his Job
Carolyn Burnham : Your father and I were just discussing his day at work. Why don't you tell our daughter about it, honey?
Lester Burnham : Janie, today I quit my job. And then I told my boss to go fuck himself, and then I blackmailed him for almost sixty thousand dollars. Pass the asparagus.
Carolyn Burnham : Your father seems to think this type of behavior is something to be proud of.
Lester Burnham : And your mother seems to prefer I go through life like a fucking prisoner while she keeps my dick in a mason jar under the sink.
Carolyn Burnham : How dare you speak to me that way in front of her. And I marvel that you can be so contemptuous of me, on the same day that you LOSE your job.
Lester Burnham : Lose it? I didn't lose it. It's not like, "Whoops! Where'd my job go?" I QUIT. Someone pass me the asparagus.
Lester on his Marriage
Colonel Frank Fitts : Where's your wife?
Lester Burnham : Uh, I dunno. Probably out fucking that dorky, prince-of-real-estate asshole. And you know what? I don't care.
Colonel Frank Fitts : Your wife is with another man and you don't care?
Lester Burnham : Nope. Our marriage is just for show. A commercial for how normal we are when we're anything but.
Daniel Menaker
Posted Thursday, June 24, 1999, at 2:06 PM ET
Hollywood, despite (or perhaps because of) its never-ending Quest for Bucks, always manages to show us what's on our minds, however distortedly, clumsily, and even meretriciously. Right now, and for the past few years, Hollywood has been telling us that we're growing less sure about the distinction between appearance and reality--that as technology saturates more and more of our daily lives, we are worried that life may be a put-up job, a plot, a game, a show.
Don't tell me you don't think new technologies of communication haven't made life less real. E-mail does not directly convey the physical actions of its sender, as old-fashioned letters do. Likewise with faxes. So many screens bring us so much information so quickly that it is undigestable, intellectually and emotionally. We know more and understand less, we react more and reflect less, we do more and accomplish less, we hear more and listen less, we look more and see less, we go more places and travel less, we talk more and say less. We generalize more and specify less; at least I seem to.
