While it's still too early to actually declare an Oscar winning movie for 1999, last weekend the film American Beauty was released and it's the first real major Oscar contender this year. American Beauty stars Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, and Thora Birch. The film was truly mesmerizing and original, and it could be a popular choice as the best film of the year.
This is one of those rare film achievements that almost cannot be described, it must be experienced. This was an exciting film to watch, not only for its brilliant and beautiful cinematography, but also to sense a first time director emerging with such promise. Sam Mendes has directed a film filled with so much truth about the human condition, that even though we may not directly relate to the extremes of some of the characters in the film, there are parts of them that we certainly know first hand.
The film is narrated by its main character, Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey, who is living a regular suburban life with a wife and teenage daughter, but we learn early on that things are quite tragic in this suburban life. The opening of the film shocks us right away, and sets the entire tone for what is to come. What unfolds is an amazingly written downward spiral, filled with as much tragedy and sadness as it is filled with uplifting hope as well.
That is what rings so true to so many people, it becomes so easy to let so many years pass by and be trapped by life, and in this story, Lester finds a new spirit from the young boy who lives next door, who supplies him with drugs, and invigorates Lester to quit his job, blackmail the company, and try to search for that invigorated spirit that he feels he has lost through so many years of a dead end marriage and a dead end job.
