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In
the wake of Academy hopefuls vying for the affection
of sundry critics, American Beauty has emerged,
if not intentionally, as an existential thriller
with a demonic virtue that will certainly come to
be treasured by a subculture of discerning movie-goers.
This is a welcomed fix for the often displaced intellectual
craving sophistication in light of the endless commercial
feints pretending to deliver morally guarded entreaties
about the world around us.
Embellished by psychological subversion, American
Beauty remains deep and dynamic, a haunting complicity,
that far exceeds recent attempts to dispel the Rockwellian
family, presenting a debacle of domestic angst employed
with an intellectual sensitivity uncommon in today's
colossal motion pictures.
To
illustrate this point, one has only to observe the
crisis of faith experienced by each individual as
he or she moves within the parameters of the story.
For example, Kevin Spacey, as the disenchanted husband,
empowers his character in such a way that it would
be simply wrong to tag his unconventional turn as
a mere symptom of mid-life crisis-which I'm sure
most people will succumb to, due to the comedic,
almost asinine steps he takes in which to achieve
an emotional divorce from his current state of affairs.
Throughout
the movie, there is collective feeling-what most
existentialists would term angst-of utter displacement
and nervosa that belies any orderly solution. The
world of prearranged logic and domestic tranquility
is excoriated directly by Spacey or Benning in the
form of outward rebellion, and conversely is undermined
indirectly by the pyrotechnics of the mysterious
next-door neighbor.
Armed
with only his video camera, and done so convincingly
that it leads one to believe that the writers were
well aware of Walter Benjamin's monumental essay,
"Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," the
young man become attuned to the beauty that arises
from a chaotic world, observed only through the
lens of his camera. As he transforms the most trivial
incidents into the most pietistic of all religious
rituals, his lens becomes a gateway for that old
shibboleth: Art imitating life. Moreover, the existential
themes that run so fluently throughout this movie,
are not compressed into one character, in fact the
whole world of American Beauty avails itself to
existential analysis.
If
beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, then
American Beauty succeeds in that it disperses itself
in so many directions, that both the average commercial
moviegoer and the disciplined intellectual will
find its prismatic messages rich with color. One
has only to be reminded of the visual masterpieces
produced by the unassuming yet deeply sensitive
next-door neighbor: A piece of paper performing
aerial acrobatics in the wind tunnel reminiscent
of the existential vertigo that one feels in our
modern situation as he is flung about by a wealth
of contradictory information.
Furthermore,
one's first impression would be that this movie
is nothing more than an intricately crafted examination
of the meaning of beauty in a world that is subjugated
by aesthetic norms. I think the philosophical analysis
does not reject its aesthetic sibling, however,
it seems to play a minor role in the larger sentence
pronounced against contemporary ethical norms.
The
problem remains: How can a movie that is suffused
with philosophical genius, compete against the commercialism
of Hollywood that has relied so long on an ethic
of shameless self-promotion?
One
way is to adopt the same philosophy. If you can't
beat 'em, join 'em. And the producers of American
Beauty have done just that. By re-releasing their
silverscreen masterpiece, these luminaries are hoping
to draw attention to a project that appeals to both
regular box-office crowds and the more subversive,
misfitted theatergoer who may spend more time reading
Nietzsche than succumbing to the mind-numbing anesthetics
of Hollywood balderdash. The sad part of all of
this is that the later will never explore, least
of all, understand the wealth of philosophical themes
deposited beneath the surface. This dig will be
left to film archaeologists alone.
Frank
S. Palmisano III is the "Poet-in-Residence" at Carver
Center for Arts & Technology in Towson, MD. He is
a graduate of Towson University and is currently
pursuing an M.A. in Philosophy at American University
and an M.A. in Theology at St. Mary's Seminary &
University. In his leisure time, he also freelances
as an entertainment critic for Digital City
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