Word: lester
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...start of the movie, Lester Burnham (a brilliant Kevin Spacey), trapped and overly-insulated, leads a meaningless life with no sense of power or self-esteem; bogged down with particulars, he no longer knows how and when to express the proper emotions and can no longer communicate with his daughter or wife. Burnham eventually snaps this spell by developing a strong sexual fantasy for his daughter's 17-year-old friend, triggering an entirely hedonistic lifestyle in which he buys whatever he wants and smokes pot all day. This is a direct reaction to his prior condition of too much...
...weightlifting, quitting work, bitching out his "joyless" wife for her materialism, and getting the 1970 Pontiac Firebird he always wanted. Because Spacey is such a delight to watch, digging into the material with wit, joy, and not a little smugness, it's easy to miss how cliched Lester's rebellion is. But his wicked renovations are little more than the contents of a stodgy suburban milestone, the mid-life crisis. Lester's voice-overs insist that it is so much more: the rediscovery of beauty in the world, of accessible pleasures. Still, he really does little more than abandon...
Still, the fact that a relationship between Angela and Lester seems a distinct (and perhaps even worthy) possibility is shocking for a movie that is ostensibly mainstream. In many respects, for that matter, this film is unusual in its refusal to play by the rules of Hollywood filmmaking: demolishing the boundaries between adult problems and adolescent fears, and, most significantly, declining to impose any code of morals over its characters' behavior. This is the first movie I have seen in a long time (well, at least since Go) that makes drug dealing seem like an upwardly mobile profession...
What makes American Beauty both so fascinating and troubling is its refusal to play its characters' idiosyncrasies for shock value, and especially its amoral complicity in Lester's lesser actions. The film's tone is strangely gleeful, for instance, when Lester viciously berates his chilly wife.Winning an argument easily with a self-satisfied put-down that sadistically needles her insecurities, Spacey lets a devilish grin sneak across his face as if to say: ooh! that was fun. Trouble is, Lester's target (adeptly played by Bening) is so easy and his blow so gratuitous that one can't help feeling...
...fact is, this stale groove is just a pose of countercultural shallowness -- mistaking selfish cruelty for an authentic rebellion within the soul. Lester isn't tuning in or dropping out; he's just turning the reins over to his inner selfish teenager. It's a shame, really, that for all its gorgeousness and thoughtfulness, there isn't more underneath American Beauty. After all, as the promotional tagline insists, this is a movie that invites "look[ing] closer." It should, by all accounts, be remarkably subtle. For a time as I watched (from somewhat farther away), I agreed -- snowed...