American Beauty Well, I just got back from seeing American Beauty and I can't say enough about it. I think that everyone should should see this. However, I have a feeling that most people just won't "get it". The movie is, on the outside the story of 7 separate people and their disfunctional, screwed up, and just generally weird lives. "Ordinary" perhaps, but not totally. At a point in the movie one by one each of them finds something inside themselves that lets them... how do you describe it... "become complete" perhaps. One finds love, another finds someone who has a similar heart to themselves, yet another finds that she is not "ugly" and "ordinary". One finds that she is.

The actors were fantastic. Kevin Spacey was realistic and hilarious in his portayal of Lester Burnham, mild mannered office drone turned pot smoking, working out, lusting after young girls type guy. Annette Benning as his wife was realistic as well, perfectly portraying a lady whose search for success took precidence over everything else in her life, including her family, love, and her happiness. I guess in a way she was an older parallel to Angela Hayes (Mela Suvari of American Pie fame), the object of Lester's lust. If I were to fault any of the characters in this show, it would be her. Her character of an oversexed, over-hyped, over-lusted-after high school girl was just a little over done to be as realistic as the other characters in the movie. However, this is a small complaint.

Spacey takes top billing, but due to the content of the movie, I have to say that Thora Birch (Lester's daughter Jane) and Wes Bentley (their nextdoor neighbor Ricky) were the stars. Theirs was, in my opinion, the most important part of the movie. Through somewhat "normal" circumstances they found what it took pot, lust, or an affair for the other characters in the film to discover about themselves. Of course, I am always a sucker for "luser finds happiness" type movies, but still. Jane seeing in Ricky what her friend Angela discounted off the start (partly because he didn't look at her at all (!!!)). And almost more important was what he saw in her. Actually, what he saw in life. Seeing beauty in everything from a flying plastic bag to a dead bird. "Like seeing God looking back at you."

There were, in my opinion, two defining moments in the film. The first is noted by IMDB in their review. The dancing bag (just smile and nod till you see the movie and get it). The second is the scene of Ricky filming the window. The revealing one where Jane, uhmm.... shows all shall we say. Why is this defining? This is where we see that Ricky isn't some physcho stalker type. How do we know this? His focus of the camera is on her face, unwaveringly. He sees that beauty in her and does his best to capture it for posterity as it were. When Ricky and Jane film each other there is no kinky camera games, you'll notice that their filming is almost always focused on each others faces. Completely.

So what for all this ranting. Basiclly it takes a certain type of person to appreciate this movie. Maybe the type who saw Chasing Amy as something more than some guy chasing after a lesbian in some weird twisted kinky way. Or who understood that Blade Runner was about so much more than some guy chasing after some escaped androids. This is the sort of person I think I am and I was jaw-dropped by the movie. It's not full of action, sex, violence, or humor. There is sex, there is humour, there is violence, but there is more than that in all of it. It says something about life, and love. I'm not sure I can say exactly what, but I hope that when you see it you will feel the... surge of "something" that I felt hearing Spacey's voiceover saying "I know you don't have any idea what I'm talking about. It's okay. You will."