Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Reviews219
stryker-5's rating
Hmmm ... Let's just take a cool, objective look at a few of the comments made by IMDb users who have reviewed "American Beauty". "Haunting." "Riveting." "Brilliant." "More than meets the eye." "Uplifitng." "Never contrived." "By far the best I have ever seen." "Makes you think." "Exceptional." "Never gives stereotypes." "Classic masterpiece." "Movies don't get any better than this."
And that list is by no means exhaustive. Now let's contemplate the actual film that these people have been watching.
Lester Burnham is Suburban Man. An unremarkable individual not valued by his employer and ignored by his family, he has wasted his entire adult life by succumbing to the routine of work and home, and failing to indulge his own individuality. When two key events coincide (the loss of his job and the dawning of a 'crush' on his daughter's friend) Lester is suddenly free to "beat his drum", slough off years of conformity and be his eccentric self.
Yes, that's right, yet another dull, cliche-ridden suburban situation comedy hinting at inchoate unease deep in the soul of bourgeois America. All the predictable bases are touched during this smug box-office home run - petty snobbery, keeping up appearances, repressed yearnings for Bali Hi, and that profound American lament, "I've Never Been To Me".
And what does Lester do to express his newfound rebellious individuality? How exactly does he challenge the suburban world which he has rejected? Form a witches' coven? Invent a world language? Assassinate Castro? Reproduce indian cave art using bison dung as paint? No. He drinks beer in front of the TV set, and gets a job in a hamburger joint. Can America's big-budget Dream Factory come up with nothing more exciting than this?
Before dealing with the wider themes, I would like to tackle some details which bothered me. What is a gun doing in this story? Are Hollywood's screenwriters so bankrupt of ideas that they can't construct a plot without relying on the dreadfully-overworked device of pistol-packing? The opening shower sequence was embarrassing. Adult jokes are fine by me, bawdy humour is great ... but this was unnecessary and degrading. It simply didn't belong. A narrator who announces that he is dead isn't a clever touch, it's just sloppy work. Is Mena Suvari REALLY the embodiment of American beauty? I find that hard to believe. And what about the total loss of nerve surrounding her character? Isn't this brash film supposed to be proud of its handling of adult issues? So why does the temptress have to be revealed as a trembling little virgin? We hear a great deal of American trumpeting of feminism as a cause. Can't anyone see that this moral cave-in is profoundly anti-feminist? On a similar note, what was Thora Birch's topless shot all about? It defines the term 'gratuitous'.
And so, back to the broader picture. "American Beauty" isn't any of those amazing things that people have claimed it to be. It isn't even mediocre. It's a tired, self-satisfied, deeply unimaginative rehashing of a format which was outworn by the time "My Favourite Martian" hit the TV screen. Challenging the regularity of suburban life isn't clever and isn't funny. It is gut-achingly DULL.
The question which arises, then, is why so many people are sincerely convinced that "American Beauty" outshines "Citizen Kane". I offer this for consideration ... they feel that way because they are told to. It doesn't work every single time, and sometimes it misses spectacularly, but Hollywood knows that as a general rule, advertising pays dividends. Tell people often enough that they need to see this mighty film, and they will accept the premises - both that they need to see it, and that it's mighty.
Barnum said that nobody ever went broke by under-estimating the public. There's truth in that. Just provide the bread and the circuses, and the docile populace will take you at your word that the bread is delicious and the circuses thrilling.
The public wants what the public gets.
And that list is by no means exhaustive. Now let's contemplate the actual film that these people have been watching.
Lester Burnham is Suburban Man. An unremarkable individual not valued by his employer and ignored by his family, he has wasted his entire adult life by succumbing to the routine of work and home, and failing to indulge his own individuality. When two key events coincide (the loss of his job and the dawning of a 'crush' on his daughter's friend) Lester is suddenly free to "beat his drum", slough off years of conformity and be his eccentric self.
Yes, that's right, yet another dull, cliche-ridden suburban situation comedy hinting at inchoate unease deep in the soul of bourgeois America. All the predictable bases are touched during this smug box-office home run - petty snobbery, keeping up appearances, repressed yearnings for Bali Hi, and that profound American lament, "I've Never Been To Me".
And what does Lester do to express his newfound rebellious individuality? How exactly does he challenge the suburban world which he has rejected? Form a witches' coven? Invent a world language? Assassinate Castro? Reproduce indian cave art using bison dung as paint? No. He drinks beer in front of the TV set, and gets a job in a hamburger joint. Can America's big-budget Dream Factory come up with nothing more exciting than this?
Before dealing with the wider themes, I would like to tackle some details which bothered me. What is a gun doing in this story? Are Hollywood's screenwriters so bankrupt of ideas that they can't construct a plot without relying on the dreadfully-overworked device of pistol-packing? The opening shower sequence was embarrassing. Adult jokes are fine by me, bawdy humour is great ... but this was unnecessary and degrading. It simply didn't belong. A narrator who announces that he is dead isn't a clever touch, it's just sloppy work. Is Mena Suvari REALLY the embodiment of American beauty? I find that hard to believe. And what about the total loss of nerve surrounding her character? Isn't this brash film supposed to be proud of its handling of adult issues? So why does the temptress have to be revealed as a trembling little virgin? We hear a great deal of American trumpeting of feminism as a cause. Can't anyone see that this moral cave-in is profoundly anti-feminist? On a similar note, what was Thora Birch's topless shot all about? It defines the term 'gratuitous'.
And so, back to the broader picture. "American Beauty" isn't any of those amazing things that people have claimed it to be. It isn't even mediocre. It's a tired, self-satisfied, deeply unimaginative rehashing of a format which was outworn by the time "My Favourite Martian" hit the TV screen. Challenging the regularity of suburban life isn't clever and isn't funny. It is gut-achingly DULL.
The question which arises, then, is why so many people are sincerely convinced that "American Beauty" outshines "Citizen Kane". I offer this for consideration ... they feel that way because they are told to. It doesn't work every single time, and sometimes it misses spectacularly, but Hollywood knows that as a general rule, advertising pays dividends. Tell people often enough that they need to see this mighty film, and they will accept the premises - both that they need to see it, and that it's mighty.
Barnum said that nobody ever went broke by under-estimating the public. There's truth in that. Just provide the bread and the circuses, and the docile populace will take you at your word that the bread is delicious and the circuses thrilling.
The public wants what the public gets.
Spain, more than most nations, has to deal with its ghosts. The Franco years were a time of enforced stasis, a period when no creativity was allowed to thrive, and progress of any kind was suppressed ruthlessly. A false mentality was imposed on the nation, a communal fantasy looking back in time to a supposedly innocent 'golden age'. Spaniards were forced to see themselves and their culture in terms of Carmens and castanets, fans and fandangos. A people was frozen in time for forty years, and fed on a diet of synthetic movies and novels which summoned up a sexless, crime-free rural idyll, Franco's concept of nationhood. While the West had the Rolling Stones, Spain had troubadors in sombreros. The galloping modernity which has transformed Spanish society in a single generation has given the young adults of today an interesting 'window' on history. While the West has moved smoothly from Sinatra to Sid Vicious, from Marilyn Munroe to Marilyn Manson, Spain has a deep chasm between today and yesterday. Almodovar is intensely concerned with this gap, and his films serve two functions in respect of it. They analyse the social forces which created it (and were spawned by it), and they help Spain to bridge the barranco. It is time now for Spain to move on. When Elena meets Victor for one final date, the purpose of the sexual coupling is to wipe out the guilt which clings to their shared past.
New and Old clash on every street corner. We hear a soundtrack of anodyne 'traditional' songs overlaid on scenes of black immigrants doing drug deals. Sancho is a model of old-fashioned manhood who tries, but fails, to castrate the New Man, Victor. The house left to Victor by his mother is out in the northern satellits township of Ventilla, a working-class ghetto of high-rise tenements, Franco's already-rotting 'solution' to Spain's social problems.
Cinematically, "Carne Tremula" is second only to "Todo Sobre Mi Madre" as an example of Almodovar's assured command of the film-maker's craft. Transitions are especially well-done. A bus door opens and we see, through the cab, Victor standing, waiting to board. This is the portal of movement opening for Victor, the boy with the gift of lifetime freedom of the buses (symbolically, the 'new' Spaniard, born to a life of movement). Clara remembers her first sexual intercourse, and looks at a photo of herself in First Communion dress. Both events were first communions, both were rites of passage, abandoning the childhood phase. Almodovar moves the action forward from 1980's Madrid to Barcelona in the Olympic Year (1992) by showing the olympic logo on the cycle track, viewed from overhead, as the cyclists cross it. To end Victor's prison sequence, a bus (always his symbol) passes right to left, 'wiping' the prison and revealing the free man. Sancho the housebound husband is re-introduced with power and economy when Clara crosses her own 'welcome' mat to be greeted by him. Fire, earth, ice and water are used as 'gates' in the narrative, marking new beginnings (for example, Clara's frying-pan catches fire because Victor distracts her by announcing the end of the affair). Isabel's waters break on the bus, and we see men in water at moments of 're-birth' (David in the bath, newly secure in the permanence of Elena's love).
Stalking is a strong theme, Almodovar inverting and perverting the idea of sexual arousal and pursuit. Voyeurism can be innocent and healthy (young Victor watching Elena in her apartment) but becomes sick when the watcher is impotent and jealous (David filming the Victor-Clara couplings). Victor pursues Elena, even wearing a wolf's head in order to close in on her.
Clara is the woman with no sense of direction, whose emotional life is arid. She depends on but does not love the useless Sancho. She loves but cannot possess the sexually potent Victor. The mutual gunning-down of Clara and Sancho is pre-ordained, both in the earlier attempt, and in the shooting by which Sancho launched the narrative.
Elena, like many young bourgeois adults, had a heroin phase in her teen years, but has put that behind her and leads a useful and caring life. However, character is fate. She cannot escape the consequences of her sexual union with Victor. The 'final date' is the powerful climax of the film, the fatal destiny to which all of these characters are tending. It speaks volumes of Almodovar's talent that his highly-improbable last reel, with all of the central characters converging on one spot, is entirely believable.
In a film predicated on contradictions, David is contradiction personified. The sporting champion with no life in his penis, the good man who cuckolded his friend and partner, the hero of the stand-off in the apartment who becomes the raging jealous spectator on the sidelines, David is both admirable and despicable. His obsession with basketball is psychologically neat - a sublimation of his damaged machismo - and also a devastating revelation. The wheelchairs swoop around the court in a Busby Berkley parody of athleticism, and the ball pops into the basket in clever mimicry of the coitus for which this is David's substitute.
And Victor? He is the picaro, the innocent who is always on the move, never comprehending the forces acting upon him, yet never defeated by those forces. His 'life on wheels' is the true life, in contrast with David's sterile life-in-death on wheels. Victor, alone of all the characters, grows because of his suffering. Franco's Spain was static, but Victor has broken free of that prison, and is dynamic. He moves. Thus is he the true victor.
New and Old clash on every street corner. We hear a soundtrack of anodyne 'traditional' songs overlaid on scenes of black immigrants doing drug deals. Sancho is a model of old-fashioned manhood who tries, but fails, to castrate the New Man, Victor. The house left to Victor by his mother is out in the northern satellits township of Ventilla, a working-class ghetto of high-rise tenements, Franco's already-rotting 'solution' to Spain's social problems.
Cinematically, "Carne Tremula" is second only to "Todo Sobre Mi Madre" as an example of Almodovar's assured command of the film-maker's craft. Transitions are especially well-done. A bus door opens and we see, through the cab, Victor standing, waiting to board. This is the portal of movement opening for Victor, the boy with the gift of lifetime freedom of the buses (symbolically, the 'new' Spaniard, born to a life of movement). Clara remembers her first sexual intercourse, and looks at a photo of herself in First Communion dress. Both events were first communions, both were rites of passage, abandoning the childhood phase. Almodovar moves the action forward from 1980's Madrid to Barcelona in the Olympic Year (1992) by showing the olympic logo on the cycle track, viewed from overhead, as the cyclists cross it. To end Victor's prison sequence, a bus (always his symbol) passes right to left, 'wiping' the prison and revealing the free man. Sancho the housebound husband is re-introduced with power and economy when Clara crosses her own 'welcome' mat to be greeted by him. Fire, earth, ice and water are used as 'gates' in the narrative, marking new beginnings (for example, Clara's frying-pan catches fire because Victor distracts her by announcing the end of the affair). Isabel's waters break on the bus, and we see men in water at moments of 're-birth' (David in the bath, newly secure in the permanence of Elena's love).
Stalking is a strong theme, Almodovar inverting and perverting the idea of sexual arousal and pursuit. Voyeurism can be innocent and healthy (young Victor watching Elena in her apartment) but becomes sick when the watcher is impotent and jealous (David filming the Victor-Clara couplings). Victor pursues Elena, even wearing a wolf's head in order to close in on her.
Clara is the woman with no sense of direction, whose emotional life is arid. She depends on but does not love the useless Sancho. She loves but cannot possess the sexually potent Victor. The mutual gunning-down of Clara and Sancho is pre-ordained, both in the earlier attempt, and in the shooting by which Sancho launched the narrative.
Elena, like many young bourgeois adults, had a heroin phase in her teen years, but has put that behind her and leads a useful and caring life. However, character is fate. She cannot escape the consequences of her sexual union with Victor. The 'final date' is the powerful climax of the film, the fatal destiny to which all of these characters are tending. It speaks volumes of Almodovar's talent that his highly-improbable last reel, with all of the central characters converging on one spot, is entirely believable.
In a film predicated on contradictions, David is contradiction personified. The sporting champion with no life in his penis, the good man who cuckolded his friend and partner, the hero of the stand-off in the apartment who becomes the raging jealous spectator on the sidelines, David is both admirable and despicable. His obsession with basketball is psychologically neat - a sublimation of his damaged machismo - and also a devastating revelation. The wheelchairs swoop around the court in a Busby Berkley parody of athleticism, and the ball pops into the basket in clever mimicry of the coitus for which this is David's substitute.
And Victor? He is the picaro, the innocent who is always on the move, never comprehending the forces acting upon him, yet never defeated by those forces. His 'life on wheels' is the true life, in contrast with David's sterile life-in-death on wheels. Victor, alone of all the characters, grows because of his suffering. Franco's Spain was static, but Victor has broken free of that prison, and is dynamic. He moves. Thus is he the true victor.
