A Beauty-ful Decade: Revisiting American Beauty |
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| Written by Joe Lipsett |
| Sunday, 01 February 2009 19:00 |
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While preparing my article for last month's Reflections issue (and reading Kevin's article), it dawned on me that with so many movies coming into our lives it is pretty rare that any film is able to capture our attention for years at a time. Which isn't to suggest that the films recognized in end of year "best of" lists are undeserving, just that newer films have a tendency to remain fresher in our minds...often at the expense of older favourites.
Once upon a time there were four films that consistently ranked among my favourites - they were innovative, exciting, daring, and bold in construction and performance. I discussed one of them, Requiem for a Dream, in my Reflections article. The others were Roger Avary's unheralded Rules of Attraction and Todd Haynes' beautiful homage to Douglas Sirk, Far From Heaven. The final film was Best Picture Oscar winner American Beauty. The truth is that I continue to count Requiem, Rules and Heaven among my favourite films. American Beauty? Not so much. American Beauty fell on tough times following its ascent to the top. There was an inevitable backlash as the film gained momentum throughout Oscar season, and the very concept of examining the destructive influences of suburbia, now considered trite and passé, has fallen out of fashion. Admitting you enjoy Beauty is equivalent to saying you enjoy Crash - people who take cinema seriously simply do not say that. Film snobbery attacked American Beauty head on, and, overnight, it was transformed from the little indie film that dared to be dark into another cog in the machine of The Man, a symbol of festival films everywhere that sell out and compromise their integrity for a wide release exhibition. Of course, the problem with all these developments is that it takes attention away from the film itself. If one were to step down from the cinematic high horse, it's clear that American Beauty remains an important, innovative and, yes, beautiful film.
Wes Bentley and Thora Birch in American Beauty
When the film was released in 1999, it wasn't considered a dead horse equivalent of a plot; it was fresh and daring (even the unfilmed ending, in which the kids are charged with the murder of Spacey's character, was considered controversial). The depiction of a grown man fantasizing about his teenage daughter's best friend was shocking; the hysterical breakdown of Benning's character foreshadowed Diane Lane's adulterous housewife in 2002's Unfaithful; and the quiet desperation of Allison Janney as the forgotten neighbour was heartbreaking. The real piece de resistance is the film's technical accomplishments. The cinematography is breathtaking. Conrad Hall was a repeat cinematography Oscar nominee (8 nominations, 1 win) when he worked on American Beauty, and he infused the movie's visuals with his luminous lighting sense. His talent is on display throughout the film: the faint glow around the window when Spacey's Lester stares out of the kitchen into the background (an effect achieved by putting in-lights around the window frame) and in all of the dream/masturbation sequences with Mena Suvari and the infamous rose petals. The tagline for the film - "Look Closer" - is a reference to the shiny veneer that hides the seedy underside of modern urban life, a theme similar to that of Lynch's Blue Velvet thirteen years earlier, but it is also a suggestion to look more closely at the world of the film as a technical achievement. 
Annette Benning, Thora Birch, and Kevin Spacey in American Beauty
Though perhaps not a masterpiece of cinema, the film is clearly beloved according to its IMDb Top 250 rank of #39 (after Taxi Driver and before Lawrence of Arabia). There is a reason certain films attract and inspire us with their beauty. In the case of American Beauty, popular sentiment turned against the film because it became trendy and took home the crown at the Oscars. That doesn't change the fact that it is a jewel of a film, filled with edgy, dark humour, an amazing cast at the top of their game, and boasting one of the most sumptuous set and lighting designs I have seen in over a decade's worth of film-going. So take it down off the shelf, blow the dust off of the cover, and pop it into your player. American Beauty is waiting to be rediscovered on this, its tenth anniversary. PS. Don't expect this kind of treatment when A Beautiful Mind's Oscar anniversary comes up. That movie is worse than Crash.
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