Spacey turns in 'Beauty' of a movie performance

"American Beauty"

Directed by: Sam Mendes

Starring: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley

Rated: R

Although this is his first film, director Sam Mendes is a veteran of the British stage, having brought to life such notable productions as "The Blue Room," and "Cabaret." He has a way with actors, and as a stage director knows how to craft a narrative into a compelling piece of drama. He shows off all of these talents in "American Beauty," a film that probably won't manage an Oscar sweep, but will surely be nominated for best film, screenplay, direction and performance by an actor in a leading role.

If not the best film of 1999, it's surely one of the most affecting. By its devastating conclusion, I was through trying to hold back the tears and was well into the near-sobbing stage.

What Ang Lee's beautiful "The Ice Storm" did for 1970s era suburbia, "American Beauty" does for the 1990s. It examines in depth and with 20/20 insight the state of life for middle-aged baby boomers trying their damnedest to figure out the American dream, while wondering when they actually grew up.

Kevin Spacey's portrayal of Lester Burnham will hit home to every man in his 40s in the audience, and the attitude he acquires in the course of the film will make them want to stand up and cheer.

But his fate, as we learn in the opening voice-over, is already sealed.

Lester works at an advertising magazine, one that is getting ready to downsize. When asked to write a page describing his role at the company, he is brutally frank. This, of course, leads to his termination. He does manage, through a bit of blackmail, to get away with a year's salary and benefits. This will give him time to reorganize.

At this point, Lester is already "middle-aged crazy," and he's about to snap from living with his superficial, success-driven real estate agent wife, Carolyn, and their confused, sullen daughter, Jane.

When Lester leaves the workaday world behind, he takes as his mentor Ricky, the new kid on the block. Ricky has a semi-psychotic glaze in his eyes and an oppressive ex-Marine dad.

Ricky turns Lester on to $2,000-an-ounce, government-engineered mari-juana, and Lester readily enters his second adolescence.

Lester's marriage, long a sham, has become total frustration and he finds himself hopelessly in lust with Jane's vixen of a best friend, Angela. Angela's personality can be summed up with what she matter-of-factly tells Jane: "If people I don't even know want to (have sex with) me, I know I have a good shot at being a model."

In the meantime, Lester's ice-queen wife has taken up with the local real estate mogul, Buddy "King" Kane. She relentlessly spouts self-help platitudes in between trysts with the King, and she "refuses to be a victim!" To be successful, you must at all times appear successful. Annette Bening in this role is as good as she's been since her breakthrough part in "The Grifters."

In the meantime, Ricky the dealer, who is also a compulsive videographer, has fallen for Lester's daughter, Jane. Repressed and oppressed, Jane has been saving her money for very much unneeded breast implants. Ricky is the first boy who has ever paid attention to her, and she responds in kind. Ricky's dad, the psychotic ex-Marine, thinks there is something else altogether going on and gets pushed even further into the deep end.

As in "The Ice Storm," and even more apparent in "Happiness," "American Beauty" deals with the underlying mood of modern malaise. More than in either of those films, however, is a good dose of well-aimed humor about the whole situation. Lester knows he's screwed but has an epiphany that lets him make the best of it while keeping a smile (if a somewhat cynical one) on his face. Spacey is always great, but this role seems to have been written with him in mind.

Besides the fine story and the way in which it's told, the film is aided by the expert cinematography of veteran cameraman Conrad L. Hall, whose previous credits include "Marathon Man," "Cool Hand Luke" and "In Cold Blood." He frames shots simply and matter-of-factly. He also employs a painfully slow zoom that almost imperceptibly draws us closer to the hearts and minds of the characters.

I was somewhat surprised by the fact that most of the audience was even older than I, and no one seemed offended by the frank presentation of pot use, masturbation, adultery and the fact that a 42-year-old man was lusting after a 17-year-old cheerleader. I don't mean to paint the film as lewd (it isn't), but there are a lot of subjects that Mendes deals with directly. He doesn't try to gloss over them to make the ratings board, or a box-office conscious producer, happy. The results are a cinematic breath of fresh air.

(Jim Wunderle works at Associated Video Producers and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.)[[In-content Ad]]