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‘American Beauty’ (1999) won the Best Picture Oscar of its year not only because of its affluent script, impeccable acting and creative directing, but because of the way it approached the suburbia of America. As a setting for many movies over the years, we all recognise the white picket fences and perfectly cut lawns as a sign of suburban living, particularly that of white, middle-class America. Originally presented on television in its virgin form, as the peaceful, clean and happy home to thousands of American citizens, it soon came under scrutiny, resulting in it being cast as the antithesis of what it previously displayed. Robert Beuka has noted that the film industry eventually recognised ‘that something was never quite right with the image of suburban domesticity presented on television in the 1950’s’ (Beuka, R. 'SuburbiaNation: Reading Suburban Landscape in Twentieth- Century American Fiction and Film' 2004:108). Indeed, as exemplified in many films over the past few decades, it seems that today:
‘the small town is a far likelier setting for terror than reassurance, but the basis of the terror is still the exploitation of the gap between expectations of a haven and the discovery of hell’ (Mackinnon, K. 'Hollywood’s Small Towns: An Introduction to the American Small-Town Movie' 1984:153)
The ‘gap’ Mackinnon speaks of plays an imperative part in Sam Mendes’ ‘American Beauty’. Here we see the exemplification of the divide between ‘image’ and ‘actuality’. As stressed by real estate voyeur Buddy King (Peter Gallagher) (and wholly embodied by the protagonist’s wife Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening)) ‘to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times. Indeed, at an important work meeting, Carolyn tells her husband Lester (the protagonist played by Kevin Spacey) to live the image, saying that ‘part of my job is to live that image…act happy tonight’.
The idea of going to extreme extents to hide one’s flaws to maintain a consistent, ideal image is seen throughout so many films. 'Arlington Road’ (1999)', another suburban movie of the same year illustrates this well, along with the obvious ‘The Stepford Wives’ (1975). The concept of living a nightmare, or to sacrifice various moral and ethical beliefs in order to maintain the façade of a ‘perfect’ lifestyle is plentiful in these films, and indeed the façade they work so hard to maintain is almost entirely for the benefit of the outside world and not for themselves. It is this confliction between the projection of reality and the reality itself that causes the dissolution not only of the Burnham ‘family’, but of the community around them and ultimately the American Dream itself. The image we are initially presented with in Mendes’ drama is far from what was presented on the TV in the 1950’s. The stereotypical suburban family in this sense is only present in terms of material objects – the big house, big car and impeccably kept front garden are all present. Lester Burnham is a forty-something businessman with a belligerent wife and a disgruntled adolescent daughter, both of whom despise him. He is presented almost exactly how Robert Beuka describes the ‘male’ in suburban films - ‘the pathetic target of scornful humour…or an ineffectual, symbolically castrated victim dominated by an all-powerful matriarch’ (Beuka, R. 'SuburbiaNation: Reading Suburban Landscape in Twentieth- Century American Fiction and Film' 2004:109) Indeed this is demonstrated during the opening scenes of the film where Carolyn and Jane (Thora Birch) are waiting for Lester by the car, as he rushes out Carolyn says ‘Lester could you make me any more late please?’ at which point his suitcase drops open and papers fly all over the path. However, to say here that Carolyn is an ‘all-powerful matriarch’ would be somewhat generous, as although she is aggressively confident and career focused, rather than dominating Lester, she lives her life completely independently of him. Each member of this family suffers with their own particular problems – Jane is consumed with adolescent insecurities about her body, Carolyn is unhealthily obsessed with her career and Lester, in an attempt to escape his dissatisfaction in both his job and home life, develops a sexual fixation with his daughter’s friend. However, in the face of the community they are just another family with no issues and ‘wonderful roses.
The first neighbours distinguished early in the film are a homosexual couple who live next to the Burnham’s. Standing out from the conventional norm of heterosexual suburban families, the two ‘Jim’s’ are the only consistent factor in the film. By being an unconventional suburban family (their relationship representing nothing of the stereotype) they turn out to have the happiest and most functional relationship of the entire film. Since they are not constantly trying to impress their neighbours, but instead embracing their own normality, they provide the only constant relationship in the film. For example, when one of the Jims’ is speaking to Carolyn about her roses, there is the feeling that he is genuinely interested in her gardening skills, while it is obvious she is putting on a complete act in order to ensure further compliments and popularity. The other neighbours (new arrivals that are unknown and alien to the setting) offer a more introverted, yet just as disturbed, ideal of family life. In Ian Nathan’s review of the film he refers to this household as ‘a terrifyingly real depiction of an utterly inert family deadened by emotional tyranny’ (Ian Nathan. 'Empire Reviews Central: Review of American Beauty' 1999). This family make far less external effort to ‘keep up with the Jones’, keeping mostly to themselves and struggling with their personal issues in a far more introverted way. It is when the two families meet (specifically Jane and Lester with Ricky (Wes Bentley)) the real issues of each household are revealed. The pressure of ‘looking good’ for the benefit of others is a concept that holds little appeal to the younger generation of each family, and they revel in each other’s disparity. Indeed, as each character begins finding pleasure in activities that exist outside the restraints of suburban living they begin to care less and less about the image that they present. Jane, after establishing her relationship with the ‘weird’ boy Ricky Fitts, begins to see the friendship she has with Angela (Mena Suvari) for what it really is. Likewise, when Lester meets Angela and becomes determined to bed her, any nostalgia he felt for the life he and his wife used to have evaporates and he reverts to the life of a teenager, smoking pot and working in a burger bar. Carolyn starts an affair with her biggest business rival and becomes even more withdrawn from her family than before. However, now that they are living their reality rather than simply trying to depict one, it seems that, for Lester especially, they have just retreated into a reality as unreal as the first. A middle aged man smoking weed and devoting his time to bedding his daughter’s best friend is something from a soap rather than the real world, so even though Lester has rejected the dismal existence his lived before, it seems that the previous existence was more ‘real’ (or perhaps simply more plausible) than the first. This is seen through Jane as well as she plans to run away with her new love whom she has only meet for a few days – maybe weeks – and is happy to give up everything to simply be away from the horror her family represents.
These alternate realities that the family morph into are abruptly halted. First for Lester when he is finally about to sleep with Angela and she tells him she is a virgin, and then for the rest of the family when a gunshot rings out and they realise that Lester has been shot. Although the effect that Lester’s death has on the family is not shown, the way the event unfolds suggests that everyone is somewhat shaken back into the real world and that the fantasy is at an end.
In ‘American Beauty’ we do not see one conventional, functional family. We are not privy to the easy comparisons that are distinguished in ‘The Stepford Wives’ or even 'Edward Scissorhands’ (1990). Mendes’ only works with the three families outlined at the beginning, all which have their issues. Because the Burnham’s are not surrounded by the ‘image’ of other ‘perfect’ families, the ‘ideological image’ of a perfectly functioning family is not acknowledged as imperative or significant within the narrative. This assumption is created by the viewer, aware of other media representations of suburbia in conjunction with the ‘American Dream’. Rather than an obvious visual comparison on screen, there is only the viewer’s mental impressions with which to compare it. Lester’s story attends to the desires of a man feeling underappreciated and bored with his life – at the beginning when describing his life, he says ‘in a way I’m dead already’. He does not however, indicate a longing for the ideal family that the films genre suggests is lacking. There are obvious moments when he expresses a wish to be closer to his daughter, at one point saying ‘What happened Janey? We used to be pals’ suggesting a previous unity that has been stripped through the toll of suburban life. This is also implied by a cheerful family photo in their house depicting the three of them at a younger age is in black and white rather than colour; as if to suggest that the happiness they shared is so far distant it cannot be recalled in their life now. Lester expresses nostalgia at his previously fruitful relationship with his wife, saying ‘she wasn’t always like this, she used to be happy’. However, rather than trying to reunite his family and create a happy home, he becomes entirely self-involved and pushes himself further away from them. Indeed, the degradation of the family unit emanates from each individual and the distinct lack of any family values in the first instance.
There has also been the idea that once the family is in jeopardy ‘everything is’, which, having looked at the Burnhams seems only to apply when it is a functional family to start with. The Burnham’s, due to their utter lack of communication and obsession with themselves, were never (at least in the scope of the film and presumably for a while in the story beforehand) the ‘perfect’ family, and their problems and issues were always going to lead to the destruction of their family unit if left unaddressed. This is also true of the Fitts’ family. If one were to view the question as the implication that once the Burnham’s family was at risk, so was the community, the only community we are made aware of are the Fitts’ and the gay couple. Since the Fitts’ family is as much of a time bomb as the Burnham’s it seems unfair to assume that the destruction of their family is a result of the Burnham’s. There are obviously links between the two family’s that aid each other’s downfall i.e. Ricky selling drugs to Lester causes his father to misinterpret this as his son selling himself for money, consequently banishing his son from the house and ultimately shooting Lester. However, both family units were in peril from the start and it seems obvious that at some point Jane and Ricky would have left their parents in resentment anyway, whether they had met each other or not.
The illusion and reality that play with the whole idea of reality is one that seems continually present in suburban set films. Whether the illusions are addressed directly, much like here in ‘American Beauty’ or more subtlety as in ‘Little Children’ (2006), the boundaries of the real and unreal are always being explored. As a medium, film itself is a constant experiment in terms of what is projected. What is chosen to be shown and how exactly it is presented is an illusion and re-configuration of reality itself. Mendes’ work here therefore, is even more enticing when viewed from this standpoint, as one could consider that if the choice of actors, locations and style of shot were altered but the script remained the same, through the various components of cinematic production how much of the film , and the image of suburbia, change?
Country: USA
Budget: £8,000,000
Length: 122mins
Filmography:
Arlington Road, 1999, Mark Pellington, Screen Gems
The Stepford Wives, 1975, Bryan Forbes, Palomar Pictures
Edward Scissorhands, 1990, Tim Burton, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
Little Children, 2006, Todd Field, New Line Cinema
Pub/2008
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