CINEMANIC: A SECOND LOOK: Filmmaker as Foreigner in American Beauty

Perhaps it should be of no surprise that in recent years the most successful cinematic portrayals of American life have come not from native directors but foreigners. Unlike often-jaded American filmmakers, foreign directors have a unique perspective and can be more attuned to more subtle aspects of American culture. Ang Lee has proved himself to be quite an insightful observer of American life, directing both Pushing Hands, a well-told story about a mixed Asian marriage and the cultural struggles it creates, and The Ice Storm, a subtle and powerful film about WASP culture in the '70s. Both films, the latter especially, emphasize the unhappiness and ennui that infects suburban existence. Directed by Sam Mendes, a British theater director, American Beauty continues in this burgeoning tradition, framing, with a keen eye, the miseries and peculiarities of American life.

Mendes' bleak vision of a suburban town, where little love passes between parents and children, and neighbors are suspicious and secretive towards each other is wonderfully and subtly presented. He envisions Americans as having cut themselves off from one another, isolated with their own cars, their own garbage disposals, and own lives, totally independent and disconnected. Windows are used not as views to the outside world but as voyeuristic peeks into others' lives. Cinematographer Conrad Hall furthers Mendes' vision with brilliant use of color, making the typical suburban home a mystical and, at times, beautiful setting.

At the start of the movie, Lester Burnham (a brilliant Kevin Spacey), trapped and overly-insulated, leads a meaningless life with no sense of power or self-esteem; bogged down with particulars, he no longer knows how and when to express the proper emotions and can no longer communicate with his daughter or wife. Burnham eventually snaps this spell by developing a strong sexual fantasy for his daughter's 17-year-old friend, triggering an entirely hedonistic lifestyle in which he buys whatever he wants and smokes pot all day. This is a direct reaction to his prior condition of too much independence. It is no coincidence that he chooses to work at "Mr. Smiley's" and asks for the job that will require the least amount of responsibility.

The power of Burnham's fantasy comes from a deep sexual frustration, which has been stimulated so greatly that it can no longer be satisfied by physical means; he wants to consume everything (Mendes also emphasizes the relationship between sexual frustration and violence throughout the film, having a character compare having an orgasm to shooting a gun, and another turn his suppressed sexual desire into violent action). When it comes time to perform his fantasy, however, Burnham realizes how undesirable it truly is, how misguided he has been. In the end, his solipsistic hedonism is just as unfulfilling as his prior workaday life.

Burnham's wife (Annette Bening), on the other hand, has taken a career-centered path to happiness, hoping to gain power and meaning by climbing up the real-estate business ladder. She sacrifices everything for career and seems to resent her daughter and husband, whose existences have impeded her upward mobility. This, too, of course, leads not to happiness but only more frustration and more powerlessness.

Then where, among the frustrations and disappointments of American life, can one find some kind of happiness? Mendes offers an answer in the character of Ricky (excellently played by Wes Bentley), Burnham's teenage neighbor. A strange outcast, Ricky videotapes everything "because it is beautiful." Beauty, for him, lies in stripping away any layer from a thing until it is totally naked. He uses his video camera to get to the essence of a subject. That is, he struggles to see things as they are, while his parents and neighbors distract themselves with various illusions. Right before his death, Burnham recognizes the truth of Ricky's perspective, reaching, in a way, nirvana. He remembers the early days of his marriage, his love for wife and daughter, and perceives, for the first time, beauty.

Ricky represents the filmmaker as foreigner. By using his camera as a tool of estrangement, he reacquaints himself with reality, seeing it in a new way. That is, after all, the job of a filmmaker: to present the audience with a new view of an old world. In American Beauty, Mendes succeeds wonderfully, turning our eyes not only to the hollowness and pains of suburbia but to the underlying beauty we can discover if we look a little closer.