So 90's It Hurts: American Beauty (part 1)

I've written several times about my borderline perverse fascination with the 1990's. Looking back, it was such a strange, unique time that seems all the more naive and full of tragically unrealized potential as each year passes. I'll contend that the most important documents we have to encapsulate and describe that decade are the movies that were made then. The films of any given decade reflect the values and aspirations of the culture that made them, grabbing their audiences' attention by simultaneously referring to their common experiences and showing them a fulfillment of their fantasies. Whenever I think of the attitudes of life in the United States in especially the late 1990's, I think of one movie: Sam Mendes's American Beauty.

We Americans have a shorthand for discreet periods in our history. We refer to Presidential Eras, chunks of time during which particular men were in our nation's highest office. It's a lazy and hopelessly reductive way to describe an age, but there's also implicit baggage attached to the names of our presidents. We say "The Nixon Era" when we want to refer to the horrors and weariness of the Vietnam War (which Nixon didn't start) as well as the rising decadence of the 1970's. When we refer to "The Reagan Era" we're actually talking about a worldwide socio-economic paradigm that had more to do with the decreasing relevance of the USSR as a superpower and a complicated stock market epic than anything Ronald Reagan did as president.

In that same vein, when Americans remember "The Clinton Era" we're really just using three words to describe a heady period following the collapse of European communism that benefited greatly from an emerging technology market, all things that happened entirely independent of Bill Clinton's White House. But what are movies if not reductive bits of cultural commentary? American Beauty is what screenwriter Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes thought our country was circa 1999. The whole thing takes place in a condensed concept of suburbia populated exclusively by deeply unhappy people.

The 90's were a time when self-actualization was the new religion. We didn't bat an eye at the presupposition of films like American Beauty that working in a corporate office is soul-crushing, that smart people are always stepped on and that every big, beautiful house in every quiet neighborhood is actually a prison for the eternally youthful human spirit. As visually stunning and well-acted as the story of Lester Burnham and his midlife crisis is, the values that compel it ring especially hollow in today's world where steady work, home ownership and the leisure of midlife crises are non-existent for most Americans.

Still, there's something downright infectious about the free-thinking, mold-breaking ethos of American Beauty. Its overriding fantasy is one of escape, whether literal (like with Annie and Ricky) or spiritual (as with Lester). That belief in the ability to immediately get something better was at the heart of our culture in the late 90's. Contrast that with more recent films and their tendency toward apocalypse and survival. As depicted in films like American Beauty, life in this nation used to be all about forward momentum. It was certainly shortsighted and ill-fated, but it was a wonderful ride while it lasted.

With all the above in mind, later this week I'll be taking a look at a few key scenes in American Beauty that exemplify its standing as a quintessential film of its time.