American Beauty 8 Years Later

Mid-life, a time for crisis -- Picture courtesy Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I just watched American Beauty from 1999 for the second time since I saw it in the theater. It was an excellent movie even then, and it garnered several Oscars. In the interim, I've done 8 more years of middle-aged living and can relate to the characters’ mid-life crises all the more, though mine has been a solo experience and less traumatic. American Beauty tells the story of an affluent middle-aged couple experiencing marital melt-down. The husband is smitten with the friend of his teenaged daughter; the wife is a successful "bitch-on-wheels" real estate agent and she is smitten with a successful local realtor.

There are more layers of complexity in the story. Lester Burnham, Spacey's character, feels trapped by all the materialism in their lives and he grieves for his lost youth. Carolyn Burnham, played to bitchy perfection by Annette Bening, feels encumbered by what she sees as her grossly immature, geeky husband. Their teenage daughter, Jane, is a quiet, nearly "Goth" teenager witnessing all her parents' extreme dysfunction firsthand. Jane finds refuge in the company of the equally strange teenage boy next door, Ricky. Ricky sells dope, makes home videos and tries to operate under the radar of his maniacal, homophobic, ex-marine father. In the final analysis, the Goth teens probably have a better handle on reality than anyone else in the movie.

Since seeing the movie in 1999, I can relate better to the Burnhams and I've had some mid-life epiphanies of my own. In the movie, Spacey buys a toy remote control car and replaces his humdrum Camry with a 1970 Firebird. He embarks on a rigorous weight training program to beef up his middle aged body (to impress Jane's Lolita-like friend of course). He quits his rat race job and gets work as a fast food fry cook. Just when it looks like Lester and Carolyn might have a rekindling of their love, Carolyn freaks out, "Don't spill beer on our $4,000 Italian silk couch!" He points out, rightly in a way, that it’s only a thing and they have too many things. There are hilarious and simultaneously sad reflections of the American Dream gone sour. You have to travel all the way back to 1967's The Graduate for a movie with an equally strong indictment of America’s suburban superficiality.

The movie has a shocking conclusion which I won’t disclose here – let’s just hope that we all have smoother transitions to the middle years. If there are times you feel like a hamster running on a wheel, you should pick up a copy of the simultaneously funny, hypnotic and tragic American Beauty.

© 2007 blogSpotter