ARTICLE: Movies: "American Beauty" is blooming but rank

SUBJECT: "Nihilism"? Try Tragedy.

FROM: Dave Zimny

DATE: Mon Sept 20

The heart of Edelstein's negative assessment (and "rank" seems to be a negative word indeed to summarize a movie that draws a great deal of praise in the course of the review) seems to be his assertion that "American Beauty" is:

... [S]aying that our only hope is to cultivate a kind of stoned aesthetic detachment whereby even a man with his brains blown out becomes an object of beauty and a signpost to a Higher Power. But to scrutinize a freshly dead body and not ask how it got that way--or if there's anyone nearby with a gun who might want to add to the body count--strikes me as either moronic or insane or both. The kind of detachment the movie is peddling isn't artistic, it isn't life--it's nihilism at its most fatuous. In the end, American Beauty is New Age Nihilism.

I suggest that Mr. Edelstein take a closer look at the end of the movie. He might notice that ONLY Ricky Fitts, a seriously damaged character, is shown regarding the body with aesthetic detachment. The daughter is frozen in fear when she enters the room; Lester's wife, who also apparently sees the body, is consumed with horror and revulsion at her own murderous intentions. Other characters are only shown reacting to the sound of the gunshot. Nor does the film suggest that Lester shares Ricky's world view. The montage of Lester's memories at the end of the film is hardly nihilistic: He remembers the closest relationships in his past life with wonder and gratitude. At the moment of his death he is looking lovingly at a photograph of his former self and his young family, not at a plastic bag whirling in the wind.

In short, I see no evidence that the filmmakers wanted to endorse Ricky's nihilistic detachment. As a matter of fact, his eerie self-possession is depicted as a tragic dislocation from life itself, a pitiable response to his father's brutality. Edelstein, a critic of unusual sensitivity and sophistication, simply fails to realize that the makers of "American Beauty" show an appreciation of moral and ethical complexity that equals his own.

I hope he will reconsider his harsh conclusion.

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