1999: "American Beauty" dir. Sam Mendes

A thematically troubling masterpiece and its equally troubling sense of reality.

Metacritic Score: 84/100

IMDB User Rating: 8.3/10

My Rating: 4/5 stars

American Beauty (1999) is an incredibly intriguing and yet morally disturbing critique on the nature of the American individual in the wake of the dawn of the 21st century. Facing an entirely new era of the Gregorian calendar and thus being troubled to define the last hundred years, director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball crafted a psychosexually driven narrative that, while comedic, should disturb any American to their very core.

To prepare for undertaking the task of reviewing every Oscar winner of Best Picture from 1950-1999, I curated a spreadsheet wherein I include some key information like critical scores, directors, and genres to keep myself organized and allow curious minds to follow along in my journey. By the nature of the Google description for American Beauty, it is described as a “Comedy/Romance”; while this may have been true in 1999, this film in 2025 is nothing less than a drama and perhaps even a psychological thriller, is it serves as a wake-up call to what we as Americans find to be the depressing, consumerist, middle-class reality.

The film revolves around the last few days of the life of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a 42-year-old man who is sick of his melancholy, “joyless” suburban life. His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening) is a failing real estate agent and pseudo-perfectionist whose M.O. is to be revered by everyone around her. Their 16-year-old daughter, Jane (Thora Birch) resents the entire world around her, most especially her parents.

Lester’s office job is in jeopardy, which he has held for 14 years and is now being taken from him by a termination consultant by the “friendly” name of Brad Dupree, an employee of only a month. Carolyn, neurotic about her appearance to the point of matching her shoes to her gardening tools, fails to sell homes because like her own personality, she gilds them. As for Jane, she hates her parents because they are the image of what she dreads becoming: unappealing, unbecoming, and flat-out undesirable.

As Lester infamously discovers his lust for Jane’s sexually experienced 17-year-old friend Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), he is spurred into a midlife crisis that follows his (and everyone else’s) wild goose chase for beauty and desirability. Though this main plot point is troubling—especially in 2025, as the character is played by Kevin Spacey—it is not a Lolita-type fantasy, but rather an on-the-nose depiction of the damaging effects of late-stage consumerism in American society and the lengths at which people will go to invoke attraction in others. Lester leverages his boss into giving him a year’s salary as he’s let go and uses it to buy weed off his new ex-military neighbor’s rogue son, get a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, work at a burger joint, and pump iron to get fit for the eyes of young Angela. Carolyn has an affair with the “King of Real Estate” Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher) and learns to shoot guns as a way to blow off steam, and Jane saves up for a boob job and to run away with the creepy boy-next-door even though she is not only well-endowed but also, ultimately, just a kid.

Cinematically, American Beauty carefully and precisely crafts a masterful array of symbolism that clues the viewer in on its internally driven commentary. The very first scene is a home-movie style clip of Jane, filmed by her neighbor and boyfriend Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) as she laments about her father’s attraction to her friend. The home movie style of filming a girl lying in her bed paired with the subject matter is reminiscent of pornographic film. When Lester first sets his eyes on Angela Hayes, she is dancing with Jane for their school dance team, and the costumes consist of leotards, shirts, and black top hats. Reminiscent of burlesque entertainment and its sexual nature, the movie wants to mislead you into thinking that it is a commentary on lust and perversion. Once it reveals its intentions through further on-the-nose symbolism like Lester’s burger joint job, Carolyn’s affinity for guns, or Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper)’s rigid military attitude, it is clear that it is not a film simply about lust or perversion but rather is one that suggests that the practice of consumerism in American society is what truly is perverse.

Laden in passing throughout the film, there are additionally references to other pieces of literature or societal practices that, when understood, hit the critical nail on its head. In a quick line of dialogue in the second scene of the film, Lester informs the viewer that prior to the Fitts’ moving in, in their house lived a family called the Lomans. This is almost assuredly a reference to Willy Loman of the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman, a businessman chasing the American Dream who ultimately dies due to his greed for success and inability to stop and smell the roses of life. Visually, every time Lester fantasizes about Angela, she is covered by an array of red rose petals. In fact, red roses are strewn throughout: in Carolyn’s garden, on the counter of their home, at the real estate gala Carolyn drags Lester to whilst she pretends to be a happy family. The 1884 book Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway cites that the hue of a rose correlates to one’s passion, with red being the darkest, However, more particularly, a deep-red rose directly implies “bashful shame”. Being the darkest, the deep red symbolizes lust gone too far, ultimately summarizing the lives of Lester Burnham and those surrounding him: greed and lust for beauty that has transgressed into excessiveness to the point of shame.

A scene between Lester and Carolyn captures this idea of the cost of greed perfectly: he advances upon her—as the film makes a point out of how they have not engaged in sexual activity for years—and she warns him off, telling him he is going to spill beer on the couch. He says, “it’s just a couch”, to which she replies, “it’s a $4,000 sofa upholstered in Italian silk”, and the two angrily disband. The American obsession with reputation and material wealth stops us from enjoying the finer things in life, even to the degree of completely damaging relationships and diluting what it means to experience joy into something dismally competitive.

I found American Beauty to be visually captivating and thematically gripping. I could write another few thousand words on the cinematography alone, from Mendes’ utilization of framing to support power dynamics to his hand-picked soundtrack whose lyrics reveal each character’s inner monologue. Obviously, much of this movie is a gross misrepresentation of society: every man is a creep, and every woman is a gilded version of who she believes she is supposed to be. The lines between morality and perversion (as well as, in the case of Colonel Fitts, bigotry against queer communities) are extremely thin, and while the criticism is fairly in your face, it leans towards being so obvious that it reverts into itself and becomes offensive. That being said, I feel as though this movie holds up in the 21st century as a classic, due to its ability to be so captivatingly beautiful in visuals as well as to critique parts of the American lifestyle that are not as irrelevant as we would like to believe they have become today.

At its core, American Beauty is a masterpiece that ages like milk. And yet, somehow, though curdled, that milk may never expire.

P.S.: if you’d like, I do short-form reviews on all films I watch on my Letterboxd profile. Sometimes they’re silly, but other times I am so captivated by films that are not on this list that I have to review them on the spot! Please feel free to message me with any films you’d like me to give my insight on :).