American Beauty, 1999, directed by Sam Mendes, Paramount Pictures blu-ray (2017), 4 stars.
I was apprehensive about this movie this time around. American Beauty was one of my favorite finds of the early DVD era, more than 20 years ago. I loved everything about it, and watched it several times back in the day.
But it had been awhile, long before the Kevin Spacey thing happened. I recently picked up a blu-ray edition of American Beauty at a clearance-sale price, so I decided to give it a revisit. And I wasn't sure how it would feel knowing what we now know.
I am happy to say that even though much of American Beauty did feel a little ickier now than it did a couple decades ago, it still held up pretty well for me. Spacey's central character, Lester Burnham, had that slimy, creepy feel about him. But it was fine because the character was written that way -- and because Spacey was so damn good at playing creepy people. That was his stock in trade. And for years, he was celebrated for it.
I had no trouble separating the performance from the actor because I didn't need to. This was not Bill Cosby being Cliff Huxtable. This was Kevin Spacey, we now realize, being Kevin Spacey. And he was the center of this brilliant movie about bad people doing shitty things to each other. I can't think of anyone else who would have been better in this role.
Most everything about this movie was exceptional -- the writing, the directing, the acting, the score. It isn't a perfect movie. I found Wes Bentley's Ricky Fitts quite irritating and a scene near the end of the movie between Spacey and Mena Suvari I thought went a little too far.
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I remember being pleasantly surprised and appalled by this movie when it first came out. Now, I don’t remember anything about it at all, except Spacey lifts weights(?).
ReplyDeleteYou probably remember that because he does it shirtless.
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