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24.143.15.23
Sorry, but I just watched this in its entirety for the first time a few nights ago and have rewatched it since. I know it got raves when it came out, but what's the current opinion of you inmates? As for myself:1. Annette Benning shamelessly overacts through the entire film.
2. Spacey is just as superb, and hilarious, as the hype says.
3. Any guy can empathize with Lester's stricken state when he sees Angela in the gym. That's happened to all of us. I felt sorry for the poor sap.
4. Angela's transformation from super slut to innocent cherub at the end of the film is not believable after the way she acted throughout the film.
5. Nor is the collapse of Chris Cooper's in-the-closetness when he kisses Spacey believable. Anyone who's kept his gayness underwraps for so long, after a career in the Marine Corps, etc., would not let his guard down like that even after kicking his son out of the house for being gay, or so he thought.
6. Nobody in his right mind, esp. a dealer in grass, would do all what RIcky and Lester did in front of windows at night esp. when those windows looked out across to the kid's house. Dope dealers are a lot smarter than that.Any other opinions? Would love to hear them.
All in all, however, a great movie, but after repeated viewings, some weak aspects show up.
the question is not whether the actions are realistic but only if they're true to the FILM's reality.
In the world the director created, the behaviors are. One must compress changes into 2 hours, after all, so Cooper's mid-life crisis is so. I thought it was a tad contrived but with the emotionality of his personality, not completely unbelievable.
Right on about Bening: a terrible actress who's gotten a lot of mileage out of regulraly fucking Warren.
Let's not suggest that all dope dealers are a lot smarter than Ricky and Lester are in front of the windows looking across to the kid's house. One is a teenager, the other is in a...hmmm...purple haze?My best friend's daughter was in love with the punk dope dealer who lived a few houses down. He sells the stuff out in the front yard in the middle of the afternoon! Smirks every time the police slow down to eyeball him. My friend was no stranger to a side of life probably best chronicled by Larry Clark in his book "Tulsa," but the fact that his oldest daughter loved this idiot drove him up the wall.
Of course, I also have met dope dealers so nice and intelligent, they have been put on the cover of my university's yearbook. Seriously!
It just depends on the dope dealer in question.
(1) I did not feel she overacted. I felt her charachter is a bit unstable, insecure, and her performance would be consistent with someone trying to act the opposite.(2) Agreed
(3) No comment
(4) I think that what we are seeing is his perception of Angela, not Angela. When she is introduced, we see the real her. Then, after her charachter supplies Spacey with his notion of the "perfect" girl, we then see her through his eyes. She is his ticket to freedom, to the things that either have passed him by, or the things he never had.(5) Never having been in the situation, I cannot say what is plausible or not. I could believe that one could carry a weight for so long before it is dropped. Maybe Cooper dropped his burden.
(6) I've got news for you. Dealers are stupid. They do dumb things. They do dumb things that get them caught. I know. I have represented them. There is no doubt in my mind that a teenager, in the burbs, where they would feel even more invulnerable than they already feel, would openly use or deal drugs in their house. They would likely feel that the police are too busy looking for dealers and users in the ghetto, that it would be unlikely that they would be cruising their streets.
I enjoyed this movie. I think that many people get caught up in the small events of Spacey's life as depicted in the film rather than at the bigger picture. Which is really what the film is about. Many middle age men have felt that they were unappreciated at home, by their kids, wives, and unappreciated at work. That is the theme of the movie.
He then meets this beautiful, young girl. She is not there for sex, although her physical appearance lures many into thinking that is her role. She is there because she represents a better time in his life, when he was younger and the world seemed to have more promise. She represents someone who looks at him as though he is important, respect he is not receiving at work or home, from his wife or kids.
Which is why when it comes time in the film to close the deal, he does not. Because that is not why he idolizes her. To have sex with her would be to ruin the fantasy. She would be like the life he already has now, or would lead to that life. For him to simply have sex with her would be reduce the film to a typical sex romp.
"Happiness" is another very good film. But it's focus is different, and therefore, I think, not comprable. "Happiness" is more about the acts themselves, and how life can seem perfect on the surface, and depraved underneath. About seemingly good people doing bad things. The details are what are important. American Beauty is about the broad outline, and details being unimportant. It is about people who feel their lives are empty. In "Happiness", I could point to bad charachters who did bad things. Not so in American Beauty. Therefore, I think they are very different films.
;^)And what happened to the actor who played the drug dealing neighbor kid? I thought he was pretty good and expected we'd be seeing more of him.
The kid, Wes Bently, subsequently showed well in a great, snowy western called "The Claim".
I am in the mood....
First of all, the big-tough-military-man....as a closet homosexual is a stupid Hollywood stereotype.
American Beauty sucked as far as I'm concerned because Kevin Spaceys character did'nt deserve to die. His bitch-wife did. When his narration at the begining mentions his own up-coming death I had a feeling I would'nt like the movie.
Not one character in this movie is happy....or even content. Too much of all that shit in real-life.
Basically a movie about a middle-aged man lusting after a teen-age girl.(Lolita, anyone?).The fact that he stops himself from actually having sex with the girl confirms for the audience ....that he is a decent man. In real life however, I seriously doubt a 40ish man would've turned down the chance. The movie did'nt dare let his character cross that line....but then, the mans basic goodness had to be confirmed, did'nt it? All the more reason for his death to ring sad for us all.Now, if Spaceys' character went beserk in his mid-life crisis, got fed-up with everyone in his neighborhood & went "Travi Bickle" style...THAT woulda been a movie!
1- No, Annette Benning is not overacting: just keep in mind (and the title of this film gives a good cue) that everybody in this film is not to be taken as an actual person, but as an archetypal character, the sum of all of them giving the director´s personal, and gritty, portrait of the average American bourgeois family, always showing us the other side of things, the gloom behind the bright colors. That calls for the players pushing the envelope in their acting, in order to give their characters a sharper, easier to recognize, profile..., same thing as in theater, where players always must talk close to shouting, and exaggerating their pronunciation, just to be sure that they are heard, and understood (and normal people don´t talk that way, do we...?)2- Yes, Spacey is Spaceyish as he could ever be, perfect to give a distancing effect, enhancing the sense of perspective in the film: he reminded me of that character Gillis (William Holden) in "Sunset Boulevard" who, just at the start of the film, is shown to us dead, floating in that pool, shot by that old Hollywood glory (Swanson) who was forced by him to face the bitter truth, destroying that world of self-deception she had built around herself to avoid accepting her own decline.
3- Dead on the bull´s eye.
4- Slightly off the mark: this is a film built on a careful demolition of the deffense mechanisms its characters have built around themselves, the characters themselves being archetypes of today´s bourgeois society, as it happens in the US (and pretty much the same in almost every country, with just a few changes to get the local flavor...). And this girl was simply wrong in her perception of reality, and her slutty role was the wall behind which she used to protect herself: once she is pushed hard enough, that wall falls down, and she acceps how she actually is, and she can start growing up...
5- Dead wrong on this one, pal: have you ever heard of "fatigue of materials", that funny thing that happens when a solidly built structure is being beaten by repeated strikes, none of them strong enough to break it down... until, after a time, a small strike brings the whole structure down? The old saying "It was the last straw that broke the camel´s back" resumes it in a fine way... and that´s what happened to that hypersoldier, whose neatness, discipline, his rigidity..., all are integral parts of the shell he has been building to isolate and protect him from the unbearable fears his latent homosexuality bring on him: and the final strike that makes his house of cards fall down comes through his projection on his own son, whose behavior he is always trying to make sense of, always looking at it through his own eyes (never accepting his son as an independent human being...) and, when he sees him in the basement gym with Lester, he misinterpretes the situation and, from his own neurosis, he goes to meet Lester as a surrendering lover... and Lester´s rejection puts a clean mirror he is forced to look at, to find that the only homosexual there is he. He can´t bear the situation, goes for his very macho gun (oh, and how do gunlovers hate this scene...) and by shooting the messenger he tries to wipe the unbearable truth away.
This man had been accumulating pressure for most of his life, and never letting a release to it: small wonder then, that when the accumulated pressure reached a point, he was all blown up...
6- Yes, drug dealers usually behave in a smarter way. But these were not your usual drug dealers, but a disoriented (while very smart) kid punishing his father, and a man who was systematically breaking each and every chain in his life: Lester didn´t mind anything, and Ricky wanted his father to see him; while (and here the script is a masterly one) he never foresaw how his dad would misinterprete the situation, much less its tragic consequences...
And yes, I agree with you on this one being a great movie indeed. Only that those flaws you´ve pointed to aren´t such.
Regards
BF
Upon first viewing I thought she was very good, but subsequently I find her performance to be derivative, calculating, and contrived. Nothing she does seems natural, only calculated for effect. Sure she's supposed to be a nut, but fo me it doesn't work. She uses speech patterns stolen from some TV actress I've seen, name unknown, from some mid-period Seinfeld shows and someone else, or the same actress, from another show. Took me a while to figure out where I'd seen that kind of acting before.
Though the disingenuousness it lends her character in that film kind of works. I guess. And I can see how it would have an apposite effect in American Beauty as well.
Bening - her every move comes across as unnatural and calculating. Not a good actress, imo. Next to Spacey's superb performance she comes off as an amateur. The two young girls in the film are better by far.
Excellent comments BF. I agree 100%. I like AB a lot and have seen it a couple times, the first time in the theater. Never understood why some people are so critical of AB, as I thought it held together quite nicely. IMHO, its not often a mainstream Hollywood movie portrays such accurate psycho-social commentary while remaining entertaining.
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marc g. - audiophile by day, music lover by night
Cher Bernardo, that would not make a better film. It remain a very bad film.
Have you tried to see it a second time?
nt
...much more gritty.
A grossly over-rated mediocre work.Just my opinion, of course. Search on it - it's been discussed many times here.
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