Extra Credit: American Beauty

I was not sure when I first read this blog question, and I had to think about it for a while. I would think of a movie and then compare it to the complex simplicities that are No Country for Old Men and fear that I had fallen short. It is hard to think of a movie that mixes great content with great acting in a valid, let alone insightful visual presentation.

After much deliberation I settled on the 1999 movie American Beauty. The movie stars two veteran actors in Kevin Spacey and Annette Benning, and features fairly new to the scene and, at the time, fresh off American Pie fame, Mena Suvari, as the teenage temptress that lures Lester Burnham(Kevin Spacey) out of his great depression and into his midlife crisis.

I haven’t watched the movie in a while, so the details may be slightly fuzzy, but the basic plot is that Lester and Caroline Burnham (Benning) are miserable trapped inside their seemingly flawless suburbia bubble. Lester is middle-aged and becoming steadily more depressed at the path his life has gone down. His wife is equally miserable, which puts an unbearable strain on their marriage; while their teenage daughter, Jane, is counteracting her dad’s midlife crisis with her own teenage rebellion. Everything comes to a head when Lester lusts after one of Jane’s slutty friends, who as it turns out, is not so slutty, after all. Irony is oozing out of this dark satirical look on suburban life, and the twists and turns that the movie takes as it comes to a close are shocking, heartbreaking, and humorous. The film’s talented cast is matched by its powerful plot, and, while it is no No Country for Old Men, Lester’s character might have you thinking otherwise. Definitely a movie worthy of a closer look.