Sunday, September 19,
1999
In a suburb of an
American city there lives a family, a husband (Kevin
Spacey), a wife (Annette
Bening ) and a teenage daughter (Thora
Birch). The wife is a
successful real estate agent. The husband has a successful career having worked
14 years for an ad agency. The
daughter has friends and seems to be doing well in high school. But let’s look closer. The wife is ambitious but cannot come
close to achieving the success of
a competing agent she refers to as the King of Real Estate. The husband has a new boss who is in
the process of evaluating all current employees to determining their “ value “
to the company. The daughter,
though pretty, cannot help but see herself as living in the shadow of her best
friend who has the sort of looks that gets everyone’s attention when she enters
a room. Family life is also a
series of compromises. The wife
has adjusted to the fact that her husband lacks her ambition and sense of
order. The husband has adjusted
the fact that his job is unfulfilling and in order to have a peaceful home life
he must accept his wife’s obsessive behavior. The daughter has adjusted to the fact that her parents
have other priorities and her needs are somewhere down the list.
This view of what at
first appears to be a happy family in a serene suburban setting is in fact a
delicate balancing act. When the
house next door is sold and a new family moves in there is no apparent threat
to this balancing act. But
series of events leads to an gradual unraveling of the balance in this family.
American Beauty is being
promoted as a dark comedy. There
are numerous scenes in the movie that taken out of context are very funny. Yet taken as whole the movie is a very
emotional journey with tragic consequences. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening are two accomplished actors
who deliver performances that are sure to add to their standing in the film
community.
A hauntingly beautiful
film that causes us to question the values and priorities that we often take for granted.
Stephen Van Lydegraf
9/19/99