American Beauty

Bellicose Bourgeois Banality

with Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch
Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by Alan Ball
by Everett Stillwell

Boom, something happens and all the lights go out, and since I haven’t been taking my medication for about two or three months, I just slide with it. Just coolly regard the colossal door of flaming white light that’s appeared before me which sucks me right in. Then, everything’s all blurry dark again, and there’s this no-time thing that happens, and due to the shock of it all, I’m only experiencing my tactile sense, blurry itself in this non-moment, and almost warm in a tingly, grainy sort of way…

…Then, in a smooth flash, all the other senses jump back into action and things get suddenly very clear, very sharp. I’m floating above what looks like one of those upper-middle-class suburban neighborhoods in Jersey. Elms and such line the street. Colonials. All of it fantastically clean, though not in a glistening way. And there’s this gray wash-WASP glamour chic – over everything that’s somehow almost…

…Plus I’m enjoying flying more than I thought I would, and then I get annoyed because even though the state of the trees and the distanced sunlight indicate mid to late fall, the air temperature, even up here, is a balmy dry seventy-six degrees. Beneath me, two bland and buff gay-looking guys jog in unison and their collective P.C. B.O. is so strong that I’m knocked off my flight pattern…

In the bathroom of Kevin and Annette’s house, watching Kevin jerk off while he telepathically whines about what a loser he is and how pretty soon he’ll be dead. At first, I’m not sure why he doesn’t just talk to me outright; the telepathic stuff seems rather – pat. The banter’s also basically irrelevant because I can see so plainly what a fob he is, dropping the contents of his briefcase on the front walk, holding his shoulders like a whipped chimp. Then I consider the possibility that he thinks I’m the one who’s the moron, who really needs it spelled out to him, and even though I hate being patronized, I decide to…

Because I pretty much like Kevin. It’s not that he’s unpredictable or outrageous – those usual fun things. Actually, he’s outrageously predictable in his unpredictability, and not just because he’s a suburbanite. There’s something smooth going on under his bland exterior, and something the tiniest bit sly under that, and this makes hanging out with him exciting because it suggests he might actually be just playing along for his own amusement or some other intriguing purpose. Makes him more fun than…

…His wife. Now his wife, Annette, on the other hand, is as boring and fake as they come. She’s taking this suburban-stressed-out-mother-wife-unsuccessful-real-estate-agent thing to a level that’s like bad vaudeville. She’s annoyingly trying to be annoying. The sad part – if it weren’t so annoying – is I know she’s just desperate to impress me. I decide early on to try to ignore her, which isn’t that…

Also, their daughter, who isn’t much fun to look at (and I guess around here, that’s a compliment), but who’s a breath of fresh air since there’s some real soul to her constipated teenage angst. Making her a rare, precious…

…One I connect with the most, this weird kid who’s family moves in next door. And it’s a no-brainer why: aside from the rebel-loner-pot-smoker-stuff, the kid’s a complete voyeur, recording everything on a little vidcam. He’s also the only one who actually doesn’t seem to notice my presence. Sometimes this can be frustrating, but for some reason it…

…Personifies the local atmosphere, which despite initial trepidation, actually grows on me. The burb’s all stylishly bland and self-consciously wanna-be creepy in this low grade almost organic way that makes me light-headed and a tad melancholy with a tinge of retardation that’s honestly not unpleasant. It’s not even…

…Unpleasant when Kevin gets word he’s going to be fired which propels him into a mid-life crisis which propels Annette into a mid-life crisis and they both start acting in ways which might be zany and funny and intense if they weren’t also reeking with a certain non-biodegradable, uh, safety-zone sealant: as in zany, but not too zany; intense but not too intense; funny but…

…Kevin blackmails his boss and I get very annoyed because none of it makes any sense. None of his threats would scare a toddler, let alone the big corporation he works for. But, for some reason, it works. I try talking to him about it, but he won’t listen to me. He’s become head-over-heels obsessed with his daughter’s best friend and spends more and more time in the garage lifting weights and smoking the dope he’s been buying from the weird kid next door. Go Kevin, I guess…

…Annette, predictably enough, starts fucking this guy named Peter who looks familiar, but older here. He starts getting her into the joys of handguns, which really just seems like a cheap way to kill time…

…I wander away (despite the earnest silent pleas to stay which flash across Peter’s face when Annette’s not looking) and go find the daughter and the weird boy next door, who’ve also started hooking-up. Now their relationship genuinely charms me, I mean it. I feel the embers glowing inside while observing them. Their affection toward each other is very tender and blandly kinky, exactly how young, alienated love should be. The only thing that taints it a little is when, early on, the weird boy burns the daughter’s name on the lawn outside her window. No adults notice or call the cops or fire department. You could argue that I’m just missing the symbolism, but I’m still annoyed, none the…

…Kevin’s getting more buff, more stoned, kind of cooler, still jerking off, and having all these fantasies about his daughter’s friend, usually where she’s naked and covered in these poorly computer-designed rose petals, which just seems to underscore the artificiality of his high melodrama. Now is that something he’s doing on purpose?

…Which, despite my state of washed-out retardation, still manages to start spawning the fungi of muddy-boredom – you know, the ones which attach at the base of your cerebellum and start expanding upward and…

…be this increasing mildewing funk that propels me to (after everyone else’s fast asleep), let the daughter’s friend drive me out to this darkened street a few blocks away. Once we’re in the backseat, while she’s all absorbed with trying to insert her diaphragm, I can’t resist and take a quick peek into her purse and see that her driver’s license has a different name on it and says that she’s actually twenty-eight. I’m not surprised, but I lose whatever pathetic horniness I was feeling anyway, and after I tell her she doesn’t seem all that…

“So why’d you even wanna fuck me at all?” I ask, not really interested.

“I just thought you were, you know, powerful. You stand around watching everyone all the time, sometimes you’re taking notes and everyone – except Kevin – is supposed to not know you’re there, but we all know, you know? …I just thought maybe you were…”

“Divine?” I can’t help it; I’m yawning.

…She gives me a scrunched-up look. “No, somebody important, like a movie producer or something.” Shaking her head as she pulls up her panties…

…Basically, it all ends on this annoyingly convenient rainy night. The weird kid gets the shit beat out of him by his dad, and I get very annoyed because the weird kid doesn’t even seem that hurt. He goes next door, finds the daughter, and asks her to run away with him to New York because he has lots of money saved and connections and I get even more annoyed because if he was so together and connected as a dealer then why was he bothering to live in such a dysfunctional home? Basically, the daughter’s friend who’s spending the night gets pissed and way jealous and throws herself at Kevin – Annette’s out – and I get supremely annoyed because he decides at the last minute not to fuck her (she says she’s a virgin – yeah honey, whatever) and it just doesn’t make any sense. Even though the weird kid and the daughter are now on the run, they stay at home and as seconds tick by, it’s making less and less sense. Finally, when Kevin gets shot and killed by the weird kid’s father, I can’t take it anymore – the utter annoyance is so out-of-hand, I’m so pissed that I stop everything.

“Listen,” I say, trying to keep from grinding my teeth which just exacerbates the fungi in my brain. “I’ll make it short and sweet since none of you angels are paying attention anyway. Basically, too many lazy choices – logic cheats have brought us exactly where we are now, can’t you feel it? This place of falseness, this place of extreme wimpy inauthenticity… And what’s making it so totally annoying is that the attitude around here is being valued as something on the higher end of quality, and that just makes this [vapid gesticulations on my part around the kitchen] that much more WRONG, TRITE, AND A CHEAP WASTE OF TIME.”

Outside in the rain, Annette is waving her useless, stupid gun around, all hostile, for once coming across as natural, screaming something about “what the hell my point is?” I just go to the sink and splash water on my face. Things start up again, I feel annoyed with myself for trying when I should’ve known better because now everyone’s really ignoring me and…

…Thankfully, it doesn’t take long to get Kevin buried, but then, as a final insult, he starts throwing me these telepathic projections that look like they were swiped from a Mormon PSA, saying these really Hallmark things about life and what it’s all about. It’s clear this is a last ditch, snowball effort, trying to blob over the rest of the mess, trying to make the whole experience look all white and pure. Take me to the middle of the road Lord and lie me down. Totally pathetic. Even Kevin’s losing his cool, all traces of slyness and smoothness gone from the timbre of his voice…

…I just want him to get these images out of my head and shut the hell up so that everything will just end. You can’t attack middle-class values using middle-class values. If it doesn’t end soon, I fear this safety could suffocate, could dehydrate, could annoy me unto death. Please let the darkness come soon!