Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
WHAT I LIKED: Sam Mendes' cinematic debut American Beauty by Alan Ball is a film that encompasses and deals with big themes in such a unique and profound way that it's easily one of the most significant - and one of my favourite - films of the era.
In it we see a typical dull suburban family trudging through the motions of their everyday lives, only to have all of that ripped apart by the ultimate mid-life crisis that fractures their normality, to the extreme. What's so incredible about that though is that it not only makes for an absolutely hilarious social satire and a gripping, tragic and liberating character study, but it also makes for a film that has more and more to say as you watch.
On the one hand, it's a painfully cynical depiction of middle-class western life, and then it's about characters dropping inhibitions and holding a big middle finger up to social norms, but it also gives a lot of time to exploring what can actually bring satisfaction - whether it's material things, lust, love, or just not giving a monkeys. In a way the film itself has no inhibitions and almost seems as removed from (and yet relevant to) reality as your average fantasy story with its extreme and metaphorical approach to storytelling. This makes it very rewarding and insightful to play through the many ideas. But if it seems wonderfully detached for the majority, the ending has the incredible ability to bring all of that back down to the ground, as in the end it's a reminder that despite whatever extremes the film throws up at you, the joy of life is always to be found in the simplest of things.
Of course, that message was planted half way through the movie too, but there it was presented as a satirical look at teenage naivety and yet somehow it ended up being the thematic through-line of the movie. Significantly though, that's just one of many cryptic cues in a film that constantly use sounds and visual messages to subtlety affect the experience of the narrative and pay-off in brilliant ways later on.
Basically, its thematic explorations and the way it plays through all of that with its character-driven narrative (Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening both deliver on top form) and - now iconic - visual cues makes American Beauty, something truly brilliant, and that's all the more impressive for a directorial debut.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: If you take it at face value, it is drastically removed from some realities, but that's really not the point until the end.
VERDICT: A film that uses its satirically hilarious and hugely engaging character story to deal with some big topics in brilliant ways, 'American Beauty,' is one of the best films ever made, and it really showed the world that Sam Mendes is a filmmaker to be reckoned with.
