Today I decided that it was time to finally get to watching American Beauty. The 1999 film won the Oscar for best picture, and is fiercely debated up to today, 20 years later. Some call it a classic, some going so far as to label it one of the worst movies ever made.
It’s kind of both.
There are moments, moments of phenomenal acting or filmmaking, that elevate it to the status of a truly great film (see Kevin Spacey’s delivery of “I rule”, which is one of my favorite movie moments ever and which I will be referring to multiple times). And there are moments, like oh I don’t know EVERY FREAKING SCENE WITH WES BENTLEY’S ATROCIOUS CHARACTER, that are war crimes and ruin the film. So what I’m trying to say is that my feelings on American Beauty, a couple hours removed from my first watch, are complicated. I’ve more or less settled (for now) on the idea that it’s equal parts masterwork and dumpster fire. So let’s get into why.
I’ll start with the good: the acting is among the best ever (save for Peter Gallagher and Thora Birch, who does have some good moments. Wes Bentley doesn’t turn in a bad performance, it’s just that the character makes me want to hurt something). Spacey (setting aside the fact that he’s an awful person who deserves what he’s getting) is amazing in this film, and deserving of his Oscar. His scenes are darkly comic and his acting is spellbinding (the line deliveries on “I Rule” and “Don’t interrupt me” are amazing). Maybe even better is Annette Bening, who was robbed of the Oscar. Chris Cooper, even though he’s playing Every Chris Cooper Character, nails it and steals all of his scenes as an abominable homophobic possible-nazi. The scenes concentrated around these characters are brilliant and eminently entertaining and thought provoking.
Which brings me to the bad. Some scenes, and there’s no better way to put this, SUCK. The plastic bag scene? GARBAGE. The scene where Cooper erroneously thinks his son is sexually involved with Spacey’s character (aged super poorly, by the way) due to a poorly-placed wall? STUPID AS HELL. COMICALLY DUMB. “Why did you film the frozen hobo? Because it was beautiful” OH MY GOD SHOOT ME IN THE FACE. This is a case of a film that thinks it’s super smart but isn’t (some took issue with Vice last year for the same thing, but that one actually is smart). It’s in these moments when it feels like Crash, which (unlike American Beauty) is wholly awful and has no redeeming qualities (OK, one: Matt Dillon is pretty great). Again, the Wes Bentley character is a pestilence.
So that leaves the ugly. Which, of course, is the movie’s treatment of its characters. It’s a great film when it seems like it doesn’t condone the actions of Spacey’s or Bentley’s characters. These are, like every other character, reprehensible, awful people. If the movie had realized this and depicted them as such, then there would be few to no issues. But it didn’t, so it ends up a deeply flawed movie that also happens to be really good. The ending seems to serve as redemption, of sorts, for Spacey’s character, or at least it establishes him as a good person. And this is where it lost me. Up to that point, you could subscribe to the interpretation that it’s presenting its characters as the despicable people they are. But it diverts from this and presents Spacey’s character as a hero, glamorizing the awful things he does for the vast majority of the runtime. This is without even mentioning the ugliest part, which is the Lolita-esque plot that feels as though it’s painting Mena Suvari’s character as equally, if not more, responsible. Also, Bentley doesn’t get excused for being a massive creep and total sociopath just because Chris Cooper’s character is far worse. Like I said, deeply flawed.
So American Beauty is difficult. I wanted to love it, and there’s so much of it to love, but there’s also way too much that dwarves that and makes it hard to view at as truly great. It ends up falling in the middle, getting a rating that’s pretty much average. Except it’s anything but. It’s thoroughly bipolar, with every scene being either great or painfully bad. The message it’s trying to get across is heavy-handed and feels wrong. Its morals are hard to get past, and it does feel somewhat dated. But there are spots of brilliance and mastery (I need to say this again: the plastic bag scene isn’t one of these). There are spots that feel like they’re taken from a masterwork, and they kind of are. Yet they’re also from a garbage movie. It’s still not super clear to me. Maybe it will be at some point. I don’t know. Whatever. I just love the “I rule” scene.
The Movie Files 