AMERICAN BEAUTY: Blu-ray (Dreamworks SKG, 1999) Paramount Home Video
BEST PICTURE - 1999
Academic
interpretations on director, Sam Mendes' American
Beauty (1999) abound; from heavy-handed variations on its flawed ‘meaning of life’ theme, turned rancid
through materialism, to various explorations about the shallowness of suburban
society. As with all great artistic achievements, no single interpretation will
suffice. Rather, the film remains a multi-layered, multi-purposed exposé on the
demise of the sacred American family unit, and, in tandem, the rise of the
profane pop culture facsimile that has since become its surrogate stand-in.
Neither is a dominant force for change, however, and thus, society today
remains in a perilous limbo, perpetual free fall and very steep moral decline. Alan
Ball's screenplay gave cause for many a critic of the day to erroneously
conclude Mendes and company had somehow dropped the proverbial ball; that American Beauty has no ‘center’ or
compass, only a multiplicity of disparate voices, all speaking an opinion at
once on behalf of the plight of the middle class. From the vantage of hindsight
(always 20/20) one can clearly see American
Beauty as a watershed reflection on America’s promise in all things – many of
its traditions, either questioned, dismissed as quaint, or long-since trampled
into the dust, as well as the promise of things yet to come – chiefly, the felling
of the cinema arts to an aggressive campaign of political correctness. This PC quagmire
remains steadfast in Hollywood today and has proven stifling to all of the
creative arts, though particularly, the movies, our present-age elitists continue
to push and cram down our throats their bitterness, despair, and articulated agendas
ahead of providing the adult world with pure escapism and entertainment, that
once claimed movies in the name – mostly - of sweetness and light.
In this month’s
cavalcade of blog reviews, I have endeavored to cover – with the exception of
only one or two – all of the Best Picture Oscar winners from the 20th
century; the epoch to have embodied the very best Hollywood once had to offer, yet,
ironically, in a post-911 America, offers us no more; Tinsel Town’s filet
mignon, since ground into cheap Grade-C hamburger by the purveyors of ‘popular’
entertainment. The one-time dream factories are now, and merely, gristmills to
fill dead air, binding up our leisure with less than compelling narratives. With
very few exceptions, today’s movie byproduct offers virtually nothing to make
us think, or perhaps, more directly ‘think well’ of the human race, and provide
its audiences with the necessary ‘feel good’, just to be alive. American Beauty straddles this rift
between ‘what was’ in Hollywood, and what Hollywood has become in the almost 20
years since. And it is even more telling that the picture’s star, Kevin Spacey –
once, a beloved of the industry – has, in more recent times, been revealed as
thoroughly lacking the moral fiber, and, therefore, somehow less deserving of
the Best Actor honor he received herein as acknowledgement, along with the
esteem given to him by his peers. Spacey now, has become something of the
mirror image of Lester Burnham, the harried husband and father, going off the
rails after decades of believing the worst about himself; Burnham – unlike his
alter ego – reclaiming something of his former self through sheer will power
and a bizarre desperation to turn back the clock and be the man that,
ostensibly, he never actually was in life.
Whatever your
interpretation of American Beauty, there
is little to deny the emotional power or entertainment value to be extrapolated
from spending two hours with the Burnham clan; the picture’s astute reflections
on suburban decay, put forth by its superb cast, creating a microcosm for
everything that is good, dying, or gone from the American familial landscape.
And what lies ahead of it is, indeed, a very shallow marker with dubious
distinctions; a wasteland strewn in personal regrets and fruitless
acknowledgement, that life itself will never be the same again hereafter.
Indeed, in this final assessment, American
Beauty is right on the money. Life in America since 9-11 has embraced a
curious pallor reflected in its popular entertainments. Nothing remains of that
bigger than best ‘commercial enterprise’ and lifestyle that once typified
American progressivism at its best – now, so completely dismantled that, for anyone
not born of its vintage, conveying what life was actually like before American Beauty has become as pointless
as any vane and half-hearted attempts to turn back the clock, in the hopes of
reliving at least a part of it now. If American
Beauty does have a central theme it is perhaps instructional - as ad
campaigns of its day professed - for audiences to 'look closer' into their own lives and then, redouble their efforts
by seeking personal improvement beyond the status quo.
As for the
concreteness of the story, that which is seen – and later, unseen – Ball’s
screenplay revolves around middle-age office grunt, Lester Burnham.
Dissatisfied at work and metaphorically emasculated at home by a shrill wife,
Carolyn (Annette Bening) - herself on the verge of a nervous breakdown - Lester
finds himself in an ever constricting, suffocating existence that threatens to
destroy his sanity. But then he meets his daughter, Jane's (Thora Birch)
Lolita-esque girlfriend, Angela Hayes (Mina Suvari). A contemptible teenage
flirt, Angela professes a worldlier attitude than she actually possesses,
prompting Jane to begin her own web search for breast augmentation clinics. At the same time, the Burnhams welcome a new neighbor
to their quiet block; retired Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper), his wife,
Barbara (Allison Janney) and their quirky teenage son, Ricky (Wes Bentley). On
the surface, the Fitts appear as a very average family. However, like the
Burnham façade, theirs too is just smoke and mirrors. Behind closed doors, and beneath his
iron-fisted tyranny, Frank is a closeted homosexual; Barbara - an emotionally remote
and affection-starved drudge, leaving Ricky to his own accord as a slightly
disturbed drug dealer, who finances his Peeping Tom-ism through high tech
surveillance equipment, used to spy on his neighbors.
When Lester's
company hires an efficiency expert to help downsize staff, Lester reaches his
breaking point. Instead of going mad, he cynically decides to blackmail his
boss, Brad (Barry Del Sherman) for a company payout of $60,000. Meanwhile,
Carolyn - a not so successful realtor - improves her prospects at work by
having an affair with rival housing agent, Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher); the
self-professed 'king' of realtors. On the home front, Lester and Carolyn's
relationship continues to crumble. Their immediate demise is averted as it
results in Lester liberation from what he perceives as the shackles of married
life. Free to do as he pleases, Lester reverts to the mantra of a free-spirited
teenager living at home; buying the sports car he always wanted, 'vegging' in
front of the TV, smoking premium-grade marijuana supplied to him by Ricky on a
regular basis, and, working out in his makeshift gym in the garage. Of course, in totem these activities add up to
a male mid-life crisis with Angela, increasingly becoming the object of
Lester's infatuation.
Meanwhile, Jane
and Ricky begin to relate to one another on a platonic romantic level; their
Gen-X angst revealing an essential co-dependence that can only end in tragedy –
perhaps. Mercifully – and rather cleverly too - Ball's script does not go
there, choosing instead to focus on an ever-constricting series of mishaps that
draw Col. Fitts into believing his son is also a homosexual; the apple not
having fallen very far from its family tree. This, to be sure, is worrisome for
Fitts, who would rather carry on the charade that he is the rough n’ ready guy’s
guy. And although Ricky was busted for drugs when the family lived in another
town, Fitts is more willing to believe that the ‘friendship’ between his son
and Lester is predicated clandestine sexual rendezvous than his kid supplying a
middle-age man with his drug fix. Lester’s fantasies about Angela are defeated
when, after repeatedly and boldly flirting with him in front of Jane – much to
her disgust – Lester seizes upon the opportunity to approach Angela in private
with the prospect of seduction. Revealed as just a girl – of his daughter’s
age, no less – and perhaps, of even less sexual experiences than, at first, she
had let on to, Lester’s realization, that he has pinned his hopes on a fictional
romance going on in his head, stir him back from the brink of making a terrible
mistake.
American Beauty’s last act remains an exhilarating
slalom into purgatory, as Carolyn - having been discovered in her affair with
Buddy by Lester (who now works part-time in a fast food restaurant) - plots to
murder her husband on the evening that Ricky and Jane have already decided to
run away and elope. Angela, who had earlier plied Lester with false
flirtations, comes clean about her lack of experience. She is still a virgin,
not the supped-up sex kitten of his erotic dreams. In the context that she
might be anyone’s daughter – even his, Lester suddenly, and quite genuinely, no
longer regards Angela as a sex object, but as a child. (Aside: if only Spacey,
in life, had heeded such a warning.) Meanwhile, having beaten his son, nearly
to a pulp, outwardly, for the suspicion of his blatant homosexuality, though
actually, to further conceal his own, Col. Fitts is stricken to his core by
Ricky's lie - a confession he has been turning gay tricks to fund his expensive
camera equipment. Realizing that his life is bound to Carolyn, Lester is
stirred from his mid-life crisis, and plans to somehow make amends for his frivolousness.
These plans are cut short when Fitts, who earlier revealed his own homosexual
interests in Lester, now puts a bullet in Lester’s head to silence his own homoerotic
affections. As Lester lays dying on the floor, we see a montage of moments
excised from happier times in the Burnham clan; a happy Caroline and Jane. What
has become of these?
In 1999, American Beauty ostensibly stood as a
call to action for the American family unit. Sadly, even its Oscar win did not stir
the middle-class from its complacency, if only to recognize its fool’s paradise
being encroached upon by external influences, destined to tear down its
seemingly Teflon-coated insular contentment. Today, with the erosion of families
nearly complete – fragmented in the digital age, where their time spent apart
has led to even more un-relatable moments between the young and old on which to
achieve their genuine and heartfelt understanding and appreciation for one
another - arguably, this battle is over. The family is lost. What is so
incredibly compelling about Mendes' masterpiece of self-reflection is not so
much the way these fictional characters intersect at this crossroads, but how poignantly
the director has managed to document this rancid little slice of imploding
Americana with uncanny clarity for its steady, sad fall – far removed from the
precepts of preserving “life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.” What Mendes and the film seem to be saying is
that, all we, 'the people' had to do,
in order to form this more perfect union, was to take one step back from the
fray…and then, as the film’s publicity fittingly suggested, “look closer.”
Paramount Home
Video's Sapphire edition Blu-ray of American Beauty is superb. With so much visual richness in Conrad L. Hall’s lushly
stylized cinematography, the results on this hi-def 1080p transfer are perfect.
We get rich, deep and vibrant colors, wed to a superb amount of fine detail and
film grain looking indigenous to its source. Contrast achieves startling levels
of image clarity. Just look at Lester’s exquisite fantasy of Angela, lying naked
on a bed of roses, with just a few petals appropriately placed for false
modesty. The texture and layering of the image are extraordinary. Blacks are solid; whites, quite pristine. And
the red petals are velvety smooth and blood red. The movie’s most dominant color
is, of course, red and captured herein with such an explosive and ripening
outburst it achieves an almost third dimension on the screen. The audio is 5.1
DTS, and sounds fantastic, with subtly nuanced bass and appropriately clean
dialogue. The one disappointment here - NO new extra features added to the Blu.
The hour-long Storyboard Presentation
by Ball and cinematographer Conrad Hall, and, the 20-min. featurette on the
making of the movie, are junkets directly ported over from Paramount’s DVD release.
They remain in 720i and look very rough around the edges. Bottom line: in spite of Spacey’s more recent run-ins with
the ‘Me Too’ movement, and whatever repercussions the actor might face for
presumably having assaulted at least fifteen young men over the course of his
tenure as one of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters, American Beauty remains a true testament to the actor’s craft and
Mendes’ picture-making prowess. It is a must have. The Blu comes very highly
recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
2
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