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AMERICANBEAUTY
March 6, 2000
This is a really entertaining movie,
it's engaging and effective in a lot
of ways, and I'm glad I'm living in
a world where it's a very popular movie.
So now I'm going to complain about
nearly every detail of it. NOTE: This is not a "review".
I expect that you've seen it.
Or that you're someone who can
pick things up as you go along.
A lot of elements in the movie SPOILERS
are redolent of other films:
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Wings of Desire
Heathers
and if I were a more
avid moviegoer, I suspect
there would be other
films on that list
(maybe "Serial Mom"?). It would probably be a
good thing if people
making movies would do
something besides study
other movies.
Even reading
a few books
might help.
The teenager girl
dialog strikes me
as being pretty
dead-on...
Written by
(Could it be that the author Alan Ball
has gone a little further
than the main character with
his Lolita syndrome? MOVING_REVIEWS
But there are limits to how
far you can go with this
kind of speculation. So let's
leave the author alone.)
But a lot of the elements
are little more than dressed-up
cartoons...
The hung-up ex-marine with
suppressed homosexual feelings
is a cliche of liberal rhetoric.
The relationship between the two young
teenage 'freaks' would be a little more
impressive if the girl was a little bit
less of a non-entity. Her best and
apparently only friend does not really
reflect well on her... and unlike her
boy (our hero) she doesn't seem to have
much of an artistic side to her. We
don't know much about her, except that
she's justifiably annoyed with her
parents, but also excessively hard on
them, which describes the condition of
most teenagers.
And the wifey character, the crazed,
struggling, materialistic real estate
maven... this woman is a total
exaggeration. There isn't *one* good
line she's ever given to speak in her
own defense. I mean, how about:
HIM: This isn't living! This is just stuff!
HER: Hey, I'm not the one who just bought Seduction hint:
a shiny red sportscar. put down the beer
before you make
The weaknesses of the script are your move.
papered over by the efforts of
the actors... but this Mom
character really strains the
resources.
The teenage hero of the story
*never* makes a misstep, he
never says anything stupid, in
fact he often seems like At the end of the
the goddamn voice of god: movie his philosophy
is endorsed as the
"No, you're not her one true cosmic truth...
friend, you just keep her
around to make you feel
better about yourself!
You're ugly and ordinary
and boring!"
How does he know all this?
Who has this guy been
talking to, his
girlfriend, or the
scriptwriter?
And "ugly"? Isn't that a little heavy to lay on
a silly pseudo-valley girl? Doesn't she compare
well with a dead bird lying in a field?
Structure of the movie: This is a
"who's going to kill him?" story.
It's shamelessly manipulative in
this direction. The point of view
of the audience is echoed by none
of the characters, including the retroactive
protagonist-looking-down-from-heaven,
(because that guy knows who did
it). The audience's confusion at
different points is *solely*
brought about by tricks of
order-of-presentation, the framing
of camera angles, and the times
chosen to cut from one place to
another.
Suspense without mystery.
CHEAP_SUSPENDERS
And if this movie isn't quite broad-farce, it certainly
employs all the plot devices. Consider the *long* chain of
coincidences that lead up to convincing the ex-marine that
the Dad is really gay.
But let's get down to the main point
of the movie: the central insight is
that to the people who've learned to
see it there is an intense beauty in
*everything* -- even (or especially)
a bit of trash blowing around in the
wind.
Depending on the kind of person you
are, this is either tremendously
obvious, or nearly incomprehensible
(and maybe the movie is a little Isn't a lot of the
condescending in assuming that much frisson of noticing the
of the audience is in the later beauty in unlikely places
category... or maybe they've just a joy in your own
accurately assessed the masses). superiority?
MOREBEAUTY
It strikes me that this point is Think about this for
substantially undercut by the a moment: what if this
boy-hero's drug usage. Is this movie produced a *fad*
yet another advertisement for for admiring the
psychedelics producing "higher commonplace.
states of consciousness"? If
so, it deserves to be dumped as What if a new generation
a stale, banal message: drugs of teenagers dumps mtv and
*may* have helped some people takes to intensely studying
get there, but they're certainly the cracks in the sidewalk.
not necessary, and the
particular drug in question -- What if the aging boomers
marijuana -- doesn't even have next craze is to put up
this reputation. websites full of pictures
of the rust on their SUVs?
In fact, one might wonder
about the hero's intense,
near-maniacal stare. This Will you still enjoy
just isn't the way that that crumpled bubble-gum
people look who do a lot wrapper outside your
of dope. If we're talking door quite so much?
about altered states,
where's the old familiar Will you go around
"heavy-lidded and (But perhaps complaining that they're
near-comatose" look? there's something all a bunch of poseurs,
magic about and you were in touch
Similarly, when the view expensive, with the inner beauty
point character starts "government-bred" of existence *way*
smoking dope and drinking dope?) before they were?
beer constantly, it
hardly seems to effect
him at all. In fact, he
appears to lose a lot of
fat in a very short
period of time, despite
the fact that he's got
a permanent beer in his
hand.
And if I may pick yet another little
nit: our hero has been raking in the
cash as a dope dealer, stashing away
tens of thousands of dollars in just
a few years? (Remember, he's spent
two years off-line in the nut-house.)
And he's done this *just* by dealing
marijuana? The few people I've known
who were bottom-of-the-chain dope
dealers appeared to be just getting
by, and only barely at that.
===
reviewing the reviews...
Just went skimming around on the
web to see what
other people were saying about
the flick.
A lot in common with what I'm
saying, but there are also some
strange differences.
No one mentions "Sex Lies and
Videotape", but many are making
what strikes me as a strained
comparison to "Risky Business". Ah, I guess they're
talking about the
And more to the point: very fuzzed up, romanticized
few people are putting any visuals of blond babes.
emphasis on the teenage-hero's
conception of beauty. Funny how the visual
look of the movie is
Everyone seems to take the title as what they're most
just a reference to the cheerleader conscious of, and
that the Dad character becomes what I miss.
obsessed with.
(And it's funny that I would
(Though it occurs to me that I complain about it since
don't entirely understand what's visual sensitivity is the
so "American" about the different issue at hand here. )
kinds of beauty here.)
However, Cage disagrees:
Beauty is now underfoot wherever
we take the trouble to look.
(This is an American discovery.)
John Cage, Silence, 1961
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[NEXT - MOREBEAUTY]