Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82376 in DVD
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, NTSC
• Subtitled in: French
• Running time: 122 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
From its first gliding aerial shot of a generic suburban street, American Beauty moves with a mesmerizing confidence and acuity epitomized by Kevin Spacey's calm narration. Spacey is Lester Burnham, a harried Everyman whose midlife awakening is the spine of the story, and his very first lines hook us with their teasing fatalism--like Sunset Boulevard's Joe Gillis, Burnham tells us his story from beyond the grave.

It's an audacious start for a film that justifies that audacity. Weaving social satire, domestic tragedy, and whodunit into a single package, Alan Ball's first theatrical script dares to blur generic lines and keep us off balance, winking seamlessly from dark, scabrous comedy to deeply moving drama. The Burnham family joins the cinematic short list of great dysfunctional American families, as Lester is pitted against his manic, materialistic realtor wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening, making the most of a mostly unsympathetic role) and his sullen, contemptuous teenaged daughter, Jane (Thora Birch, utterly convincing in her edgy balance of self-absorption and wistful longing). Into their lives come two catalytic outsiders. A young cheerleader (Mena Suvari) jolts Lester into a sexual epiphany that blooms into a second adolescence. And an eerily calm young neighbor (Wes Bentley) transforms both Lester and Jane with his canny influence.

Credit another big-screen newcomer, English theatrical director Sam Mendes, with expertly juggling these potentially disjunctive elements into a superb ensemble piece that achieves a stylized pace without lapsing into transparent self-indulgence. Mendes has shrewdly insured his success with a solid crew of stage veterans, yet he's also made an inspired discovery in Bentley, whose Ricky Fitts becomes a fulcrum for both plot and theme. Cinematographer Conrad Hall's sumptuous visual design further elevates the film, infusing the beige interiors of the Burnhams' lives with vivid bursts of deep crimson, the color of roses--and of blood. --Sam Sutherland

From The New Yorker
This amazing and impassioned fantasia about American loneliness begins as satire and ends with a vision of the sublime. The defeated suburban patriarch Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), condemned by his withdrawn daughter (Thora Birch) and his hyperorganized wife (Annette Bening), drops out of his job and misbehaves badly. After Lester's marriage gets blown apart by squalls of comic contempt, the movie, which was written by Alan Ball and directed by the British theatre maestro Sam Mendes (it's his first film), opens up and takes in Lester's suburban territory-the dissatisfactions of the business-mad nineties, in which the gospel of selfishness leaves people clenched and isolated. The bitter satirical riffs slowly give way to a mystical appreciation of the vagrant beauty trapped beneath the surface of life. The hard-edged, almost hyperreal cinematography, by Conrad L. Hall, and the editing, by Tariq Anwar and Chris Greenbury, shift back and forth between dream and actuality with mesmerizing beauty. With Mena Suvari as a teen vamp who is terrified of being ordinary, and Wes Bentley as a young drug dealer who uses his video camera to discover the hidden connections among things. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Excellent, Great, Convincing movie!
This movie is really great. It doesn't seem much like a best picture movie, but who cares, it's an awesome movie! It is very disturbing, depressing, and serious. It's supposed to be a comedy-drama, but if you ask me, it's mostly a drama, not to say it isn't funny, it's just very serious, especially at the end. They said before I saw it that the movie would get stuck in my head for days. It concerned me forever. Of course, they said the same thing for Million Dollar Baby, but that didn't concern me that much, that is, not as much as it would've if I haden't seen Scary Movie 4. But still, those who haven't seen this movie, see it, it's a great best picture movie. The acting is great, Kevin Spacey won an oscar for it. The actors, such as Chris Cooper, are very convincing in the movie. The movie is dark, depressing, and disturbing. I know i've already said that, but it's just so true, still, it may spook you, not that it's a horror, it is, however, very, well, you know, but it's still a very good, dark film, so give it a chance.

A dreary story well told
American Beauty is superbly performed and technically excellent. Despite this, I didn't care for it when I saw it in a theater.

I decided to view it again to see if time would give me a different perspective. Nope. This tale about empty suburban lives still disappointed me. Examining how people can break out of a mind numbing rut can be illuminating and even entertaining, but every character choose a path that would only lead to aggravating their personal problems. Selfishness and death are substitutes for boredom, not solutions.
Lying, blackmail, drugs, infidelity, fantasies about statutory rape, gay bashing, and reckless behavior grow weary. The only moral act in the film seemed so fleeting that the viewer is left unsure if it had any liberating value.

I found the characterizations fascinating, but, in the end, I didn't care about any of these people, which made it hard to connect with the film. I also have a more optimistic view of life. Disregarding the dreary storyline, American Beauty rightfully appeals to enthusiasts who appreciate art in filmmaking. Oh yeah, and city-dwellers that need to feel superior to their suburban cousins.

artistic attack on middle class values
This is a good film and and I would like it except for two things: The title and the fact there was nothing to feel good about in watching this film--it was depressing. It is a not-so-subtle attack on middle class American values and institutions. Targets are the American Military, Marriage, gun ownership, corporate America/capitalism, consumerism, traditional morals and sexual mores etc....The only thing the writers left out was religion--none of the cast of dysfunctional people were church going christians. I am sure this was a oversight. The title was off putting because it suggests that Americans have empty, dysfunctional, meaningless lives. This film is a left-wing diatribe with a social agenda to bash american society using many liberal cliches and unlikable, one-dimensional characters. Maybe I read too much into it.

The only semi normal, healthy people were the two gay neighbors; everyone else is a mess. Of course, the worst writing came with the new family next door with the father being a Marine Colonel. He was portrayed as a domineering man incapable of expressing his feelings and love for his family. He imposed harsh discipline and physical abuse for even minor infractions. Of course he had a large gun collection and Nazi memorabilia. His disdain for his gay neighbors is on complete display and of course we find out that this disdain is only there to hide his own latent homosexuality. How tiresome! The realtor/wife of the main character builds confidence and feels "powerful" by learning to shoot a gun. The only semi-likable character is Kevin Spacey's who is a guy in a mid-life crises brought on by his own sexual frustration and infatuation with---the friend of his daughter. He quits his job, and tells off those corporate creeps. He black mails them into a year's salary. We are supposed to feel okay about that because they deserve it. Then he pursues and seduces his daughters best friend. In the process he buys the car he wanted as a teenager, starts smoking pot again and listens to rock music. The only redemption for him comes at the end when he doesn't go through with the little affair he had been planning--but he comes awful close. The message of this film is: don't be uptight-express your feelings, smoke pot and have sex. Sounds a bit like turn on, tune in and drop out. A classic film for 60's rejects.

The artistry in this film comes in the way it is told on the screen. It moves along at a nice pace and keeps you off-balance and guessing. There are a few poetic scenes when the neighbor boy and son of the marine talks about his desire to film and his contemplation of beauty, which gives the film its title. I don't care to see it again.