Beauty vs Beast: American Beauty vs American Beast
Monday, September 15, 2014 at 4:25PM 
JA from MNPP here - it's that "Beauty vs Beast" time again! Over the past few months a lot's been written about the wonderful movie year that was 1999 now that we're a solid fifteen years away from it (Nathaniel touched upon this back in July) but seeing as how today, September 15th, marks the exact anniversary of the release of the film that would roll on to win that's years Best Picture, I figure it's time to pit some angry suburbanites against each other.
Yup, American Beauty turns 15 today. The dust on everybody's Oscars - Kevin's, Sam's, Annet... oh wait, nevermind (sorry Hilary Swank made me do it) - is fifteen years thick. (Of course if Annette had won that Oscar she'd have never let the dust get that thick - she'd strip down to her slip and scrub scrub scrub that sucker.) And all that built-up time, well it hasn't been too kind to the movie, if you ask me. But why ask me? Go read this piece at Decider on the film from just a week ago, it kind of says it for me. But now that I'm a little older the film (and Lester's) relentless villainization of Carolyn's character does indeed stick in my craw. But what about you?
Per usual you've got one week, seven days, to let the world know where you stand. Try not to get lost staring at plastic bags while stoned out of your mind, if at all possible.
PREVIOUSLY Speaking of being high, I'm still coming down from my John Waters high thanks to last week's retrospective at The Film Society of Lincoln Center here in New York (I saw him introduce Final Destination over the weekend! Shoot me now, it's all down-hill from that), but we can close the door on our Female Trouble themed poll at least... and nobody beats Divine. As Henry put it:
"Divine........there is only one Divine.......Christmas Trees beware the spurned Santa wish for Cha Cha Heels."
Reader Comments (46)
"Are you trying to look unattractive? Well, congratulations, you've succeeded admirably". Simply put, there's just no way that this is not a slam dunk for Her Highness Carolyn Burnham. She's just way way way too good for Lester.
Its' Carolyn. I've had my fill of middle aged men who suddenly discover the gym and fail to realize they will never look like the porn stars they pray too at night.
Plus, if I was going to sell my house, I want Carolyn to sell it for me.
I find it so heartening that Carolyn is winning the poll. Everything is so weighted against her in that movie and it never felt like Alan Ball found any affection or humanity for her when writing that character. I'm team Carolyn.
When Lester screams at her "It's just a couch!" I want to scream back. "Okay! You have your teenage boy penis car! I have my couch! Merry Christmas to everyone!"
Ditto to all of the above. I find myself loving Carolyn just to spite the movie wanting SO BADLY for me to hate her. The Bening! The Bening Forever!
I usually try my best not to sway the votes while actually writing these posts but YES I am so with Carolyn - that couch is NICE. And he wants to RUIN it. And he wants to lay around and get stoned and stare at teenage girls while she works her ass off. Fuck Lester.
Team Neither, but I voted for Carolyn. Hateful movie, hateful couple, but Bening over Spacey any and every day.
Interesting. I revisited this film five years ago when it turned ten years old, and I was somewhat appalled at how badly it had aged to the point that I now think that it's actually a bad movie that fooled a lot of us. I also agree that the script worsk vehemently and unfairly against Carolyn for no good reason.
JA, I was at the Final Dest screening hosted by JW. His story about Andy Warhol's boyfriend on that flight -- insane, disturbing, unusual, revealing. "If ooonly Aaaandy had had a premonition about it..."
I feel like a major turning point in the road to true grownup-hood is realizing that Carolyn is the true hero of American Beauty and that Lester is a thoughtless prick and the movie's attitudes toward them are a major flaw.
I revisited the movie just a couple of years ago and it's still so witty, engrossing, inventive, unapologetically bitchy, moving, enveloping and elegantly composed that I get instantly furious any time I see it dismissed.
All of you are welcome to your Matrixes and Fight Clubs (talk about arrogant undergrad dissertations that have Ashes badly). 1999 will always be a special year for me precisely because of American Beauty.
And Team Carolyn all the way.
This screenplay is so bad.
But, I am sorry, Spacey acts circles around Bening's grotesque caricature. The screenplay doesn't help her, but she makes things worse with her awful histrionics. Bening's worst performance, I think?
Shut up cal roth. Your views on actresses and their acting is atrocious.
I have to bring it up. I know she was too old for the part, but I just can't help imagining what Streep could have done with this part. A lesser actress like Bening gives Carolyn no nuance. Streep could render layers and layers of feelings without looking so stiff. You all say the movie is agaisnt Carolyn, but I think Bening gives the movie reason. She just can't counterplay a script, like Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, for example.
Bening is much better actress when she is relaxed, without stylization, like The Kids are Alright and specially in Open Range...
Team Lester. The movie's so hateful towards Caroyln Burnham and I don't think Bening does enough to overcome that. But I find Bening largely unwatchable outside of The Grifters anyway.
Ugh, how rude, 3rtful. Why are my views are atrocious, exactly? Oh, I see, because I don't agree with you. Well, I may shut up, after you grow up.
I once stopped dating a guy after we went to American Beauty because he kept talking about how sad he felt for Lester.
Also, I think people are debating two different things: the characters themselves and the acting. It's possible to like or dislike the performance while feeling the opposite way about the character.
Three things actually, Christine: the characters, the acting and the actors. (I admit it, because I agree with cal roth, but I still voted Team Carolyn.)
And 1999 was not all about this movie, Matrix and Fight Club: it was the year of far superior (and rewatchable) films like Boys Don't Cry, Magnolia, All About My Mother, Toy Story 2, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and The Sixth Sense, to name a few. Just sayin'.
Don't worry, cal roth. Speak loudly and with conviction.
Yes, Paul Outlaw. Also, I think Benning was giving an almost impossible acting task that only someone like Streep could overcome, but the first faults are with the screenwriter and director for creating the tone of the film.
JA: I was practically screaming at the movie during the couch scene.
Wow. I thought Bening was wonderful in this. It's an incredibly difficult role. An unhappy woman, in an unhappy marriage (to an heinous man) who did everything right (on paper that is), who is brittle and strident as a result and is trying to convince herself that she is happy while in denial of her truth even though it slaps her in the face minute by minute. Nothing she does seems to work for her no matter how hard she tries. Even cheating on her husband fails to get his attention. How do you play that consistently (which Bening did). I don't think Streep could have done any better.
Paul is right about '99 being about so many other films. Fight Club in particular should have had a bigger presence, especially for Helena.
/3rtful -- i really don't know why i have to keep asking you to cool it. But I'm going to have to start deleting comments which is honestly far more time consuming for me and I'd rather write than police comments. Please reread everything you write before hitting create post and DON'T HIT CREATE POST if you've insulted someone. the comments without insults are often perfectly acceptable. why not just stick with those?
it'll make things much nicer. Thanks.
I love THE BENING in this movie so much. I think the 'caricature' she goes for is in direct bristling at the limits of the role and the "box" that people put women in. Sometimes people act out to become what you have projected onto them. That's my theory of what's going on with that performance.
I love it.
Truthfully, I'm rather afraid to revisit American Beauty. In 1999, it was cinematic nirvana for me. The first time I really understood all these disparate elements that come in to make a film. Conrad Hall's cinematography. The score by Thomas Newman. Tariq Anwar's beautiful editing. My cineducation had began a couple years earlier and I was into classics and starting to get into non-English movies. But American Beauty, in 1999, represented something far more for me. I'm afraid now that I'd see too much of Ball's noxious world view (see Six Feet Under) to enjoy it. Henry, I don't find Lester to be heinous at all, though. It's the last time I thought of Spacey as an actor, actually. He does some fascinating things with posture and diction. But memory really hasn't been kind to Bening's performance.
1999.... that was about the rain of frogs and "When She Loved Me." About me begging my uncle to take me to see Eyes Wide Shut even though I was too young (and he spoke very little English. I was an ass). It was about the beauty of Jude Law and Kate Winslet. About the chicanery of Matt Damon and Reese Witherspoon; about kickass documentaries that made money. It was about old masters and young guns. We had to learn to spell Tom Tykwer and Hayao Miyazaki. It was about Superman. The Mendes film was a piece of that cinerama, definitely, but only a piece.
Also Star Wars,
Carolyn is essentially a Lisa Kudrow-in-abrasive-register role, which is possibly my favourite kind of role and Bening is note perfect in it. I agree that in ideological terms the film's treatment of the character is problematic.
But I personally love and have no trouble empathising with 'unlikeable' strident female characters. In fact, they get me racing to the cinema in the way that superheroes do most people. I don't find Carolyn caricaturish - not even on the page. I found her very layered and convincing as a human being. And i found her plight even quite moving by the end. These kinds of women certainly exist and they fascinate me. I'm pretty certain they fascinate Alan Ball as well.
And I never meant to imply 1999 was all about Beauty, matrix and Fight club. I only brought up the latter two as examples of films that haven't aged well (and were hardly amazing in the first place, for that matter.)
99 otherwise gave us lots of classics. All About My Mother, Election, Malkovich, Three Kings, Magnolia, Toy Story 2, Eyes Wide Shut, South park.
And still, American Beauty remains my favourite.
Nathaniel: cal says inflammatory things too!
3rtful - there's a difference between bold opinions and calling out other commenters and insulting them. have all the bold opinions you want but don't name-call while having them (no need to call actresses or commenters crude names) or tell people to shut up or what not. It's not appropriate. TFE has long been one of the more civil sites on the internet and it must stay that way for the enjoyment of everyone but also for my sanity.
thank you for your consideration, N
Have to agree with cal roth on this one: "Spacey acts circles around Bening's grotesque caricature."
Amir: Spacey never left smug at home.
Team Lester.
"Look at me, I'm jerking off in the shower. That will be the highlight of my day."
Personally one of my favorite Best Actor wins.
Swank also won rightfully that year, too.
Sorry Annette.
Oh my God, now all I want to see is Lisa Kudrow as Carolyn in American Beauty. That sounds amazing,
/3rtful -- agreed that Spacey can't leave smug behind but in the case of Lester I think it's a perfect fit for the role. I personally think it's by far his best performance.
Of Sean Penn's five Best Actor nominations, the one for Sweet and Lowdown is my second favorite, so I would rather have seen him triumph that year (and earlier for his stunning work in Dead Man Walking) and give the two Oscars he actually won to Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt. ;-)
I'm with Pretentious, now that it has been mentioned, I cannot unsee Lisa Kudrow as Carolyn. To quote one of her lines from Friends, NOW THERE'S YOUR MOVIE!!! *claps*
Now seriously, when is Lisa Kudrow gonna get her due, you guys? The Comeback season 2 isn't enough... Meh. Still:
VALERIE CHERISH FOR ALL THE EMMYS!
Annette Bening's Carolyn is one of my least favorite Oscar-nominated performances of all time. For me, it epitomizes her main weakness as an actress: her tendency to be shrill and hollow. I know she's super respected, but I've never taken to her acting and don't see what her fans do in her.
So, Lester, begrudgingly.
Imagine Lisa Kudrow screaming "We lived in a DUPLEX!" I'm somewhere in the middle on Bening's actual performance, but I always loved the way she chokes on the word "Duplex" the same way Frances Fisher chokes on the word "Seamstress" like it's...the most odious imaginable scenario for these women. Love it.
Frances Fisher in Titanic, I should have specified.
"Knotty pine!"
But the character Carolyn is shrill and hollow.
I'm standing by this being a wonderful performance. Both herself and Spacey were pitch perfect in their roles.
Kudrow was robbed the year before for Opposite of Sex.
Paul Outlaw: Depp would be Pirates? Okay. But Ben Button's dull gimmicky bauble over The Wrestler's no horse-crap hardscrabble? Weird.
Personal Top 10 Brad Pitt:
(Honorable mentions: J.D.: Thelma and Louise, (It's a minute long calling card that would ultimately pay off and result in a better career than the other guy who burst onto the scene playing a character known as J.D.) and Mr. O'Brien, Tree of Life (he poured his heart and soul and everything, but Tree of Life is barely about anything aside from the visuals, unlike 2001, which everyone compared it to.)
10. John Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (I'll take natural charisma over 1/2 of what he fails attempting in Benjamin Button. Serious is not always a synonym to quality performance.)
9. Rusty Ryan, Ocean's Eleven (Slightly better film, even if it could be called slightly easy.)
8. Louis de Pointe du Lac, Interview with the Vampire (Him and Cruise would probably be my 11&12 for 1994 and if there were a list of "most homophobic moments in the Golden Raspberry history", I'd say Cruise and Pitt even getting the nomination, let alone tying for the "win" with Stallone and Stone in The Specialist, has to be up there.)
7. Aldo Raine, Inglourious Basterds (The character is completely a cartoon, but that's exactly what movie you're watching.)
6. Chad, Burn After Reading (Yes, it's a minor stretch role (dulling charisma and intelligence to dive in), but that's what's good about it it, even if that's also why it's not his absolute best.)
5. Jeffrey Goines, 12 Monkeys. (Working in a similar total cartoon mode as Aldo, but even less "hinged", as it were. It's glorious to behold for a short level of time, even if it NEVER would have carried an entire movie.)
4. David Mills, Se7en (Yes, I do spell it with stylization. This was still a really good piece of work that, along with his other big deal in 1995, secured him as a star actor for at least 5 years.)
3. Billy Beane, Moneyball
2. Tyler Durden, Fight Club
1. Mickey O'Neill, Snatch (Even if they didn't make money, these top two roles are the reason Brad Pitt is ALWAYS going to be employed. Directors respect actors who are willing to go weird like that, even if, for some stupid reason, it turns off a lot of actors.)
Bottom 5:
5. Richard, Babel (This is a stretch, but this is barely even a character. It's pretty much just a single scene of crying that's mostly just kind of okayish.)
4. Benjamin Button, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (the only positive thing I can say about it is that he was trying to sell a gimmick. That's it.)
3. Samuel Bass, 12 Years a Slave (Yeah, it's a masterwork of a movie and everything, but everyone pretty much agrees his inclusion was THE mis-step, myself included.)
2. Metro Man, Megamind (Part of this is being at the centre of the movie sinking twist which completely indicates the crew never followed comics a day in their freaking lives, the other is: like DiCaprio, his voice is his weakest trait as an actor, but in a different way. Where DiCaprio's is almost too distinctive, Pitt's is shockingly generic and trying to execute a stab at a Superman impersonation doesn't help that impression.)
1. Achilles, Troy (At this point, I have not seen him really do worse than this and I'm not thinking he ever will.)
Volvagia: I proudly adore The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for a host of reasons, not the least of which is Pitt's performance. I know I'm in the minority around these parts, but I don't have a fuck to give. (Your top #s 5, 7 and 8 are just the worst for me; thankfully, I don't remember any of the acting in Troy.)
No option for Team Mena Suvari? Because she was actually my fav from that movie. Her and Wes Bentley. I was shocked they weren't nominated, or Chris Cooper for that matter.
I voted for Carolyn because she has all the best one-liners. The funny things is, while I think Bening's performance is amusing and pretty funny in parts, I don't actually think she's that great in the film. And it's crazy to me how she came THISCLOSE to winning over Swank's stunning work in Boys Don't Cry. I was rooting for her hard only because Cecilia Roth and Reeses Pieces were snubbed.
Then again, the movie has its problems and they begin with the tone. They aggressively called it a satire but it was too serious, sad and wistful to fall under that.
Anyways, the most impressive stuff continues to be the influential technical elements like the jaw-dropping cinematography and perfect sets. The editing, moving. The score, I think is genius and was 100% robbed.
Also, all these years and I had no idea Jessica Biel had already been cast in the Thora Birch role but had to drop out because of 7th Heaven. LAWL. That could've jump-started her in a totally different (respectable) path.
OH AND Holly Hunter and Helen Hunt were considered for Bening's part WHAT. You would've had totally different movies with either. And YOU KNOW Holly Hunter can rock a short business-mon cut like no one else!
Thanks, imdb. :D
Tough one, but Team Carolyn, because in my heart Annette won that Oscar.
volvagia -- um. Brad Pitt is in a lot more than one minute of Thelma & Louise.
The movie clearly has it in for Carolyn and is all about Lester, no matter how odious and hypocritical he can be (the couch scene epitomizes what I'm talking about).
But I have to say this near-misogyny bugged me right from the first time I saw it. People are just now noticing? AM is a very enjoyable movie but it has a lot of problems in maintaining a consistent tone and there are clearly the structural problems as well (originally there was to be a murder trial!).
I agree with the person above who gave Wes Bentley & Mena Suvari each a shout out - she in particular is really funny and believable.