If he hasn't had quite the career a lot including myself expected of him, not the fault of this film because he and Dunst are a very attractive couple. This was to be a big breakout role for Hernandez who was fresh from the TNBC morning show Hang Time. God knows she's doing a wonderful job of that in her family relationships. But he thinks Hernandez will screw himself up if he gets involved with Dunst. Davison is a liberal sort so the racial thing doesn't terribly bother him. Oh by the way, when Hernandez meets Davison, she's forgotten to tell him that daddy is a Congressman. He's a hardworking student and top football player and he wants to go to Annapolis. He's doing a two hour commute to her 90210 type high school he can reap the advantages thereof. They discover they go to the same school. When East LA Barrio kid Carlos Hernandez first meets her, she's doing community service picking up trash on the beach. Plus, you'll discover several hilariously stuck-up and utterly conservative euphemisms for not being the complete master of one's domain.Crazy/Beautiful is a poignant teen film about a rich girl in Kirsten Dunst who's a behavioral problem to her father Bruce Davison and stepmother Lucinda Janney.
It's a film that can come off as depressing, but give it the chance and you'll see that it's a true work of art, and again, a perfect closing film for one of the most manic decades of modern history. Spacey's portrayal of Lester paints the character as a fiercely smart person who decides to take action and bring back some freedom into his life after he has lived a torturously banal existence. However, Kevin Spacey's portrayal of Lester is the driving point of the film, as everything ends up revolving around the character's fate. Jane meanwhile grows to befriend her next door neighbour and classmate Ricky Fitts, an equally different teenager who films everything he sees while dealing with an overbearing ex-marine father who is the very embodiment of conservative insecurity, and all these intersect at the grand finale where a preventable tragedy strikes at a bittersweet moment.Īmerican Beauty is such a relatable film because many people have at least been close to relating with one, if not two of it's protagonists, whether it's the introversion of Jane, the cynical, yet desperate Lester, or any of the others who all have their own serious problems in the storyline.
Their daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is a sarcastic and melancholic high school student who is friends with the vain and self-important Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) who later becomes the object of Lester's desire. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening are the nucleus for most of the film, playing Lester and Carolyn Burnham, a unhappily married couple whose marriage has grown completely 100% stagnant and who are in desperate need of contact but refuse for the most part to give it to each other due to their overwhelming pent-up anger at one another which is the driving force of the film in many ways. It's something that has been done many times over, but is completely brilliant to watch when written correctly, and it definitely is here. The brilliant part about American Beauty which proves that it's story is strong is that it does the classic progression method of multiple storylines diverging at the beginning before weaving back into one at the very end of the film. A genius film and a perfect closing-out for the '90s.
American Beauty is a film that appears complex but in reality is quite simple: It's a film that unabashedly tears apart the delusion of the american dream and the typical middle-class lifestyle.