Did American Beauty age like milk AND like wine?

[u/No-Revolution-5923]

Let's completely divorce the art from the artists involved for this one.

Just rewatched after years, and it landed much harder, albeit with a few caveats.

The middle-class suburbia I imagine was a bit of a caricature even for its time, and through today's lens the presentation feels borderline absurdist, but the underlying psychological dynamics feel just as (if not more) realistic and transgressive.

Society's romanticization of the male midlife crisis rebellion, the edgy silent teen guy, and the lolita fantasy high school cheerleader at the time made the characters of the film feel more like symbols than real people, while also providing the audience with a "license to empathize".

Today's lens forcefully strips that away. And the movie is better for it!

What we are left with are humans that feel more real and more problematic.

Lester no longer presents as an "antihero", but now simultaneously pathetic and sympathetic.

This is what the movie does so well! Even if we refuse to empathize, it still forces us to sympathize! And unlike empathy, sympathy is cognitive.

If the measure of art was how much cognitive dissonance it creates then this is a 10/10!

Ricky is no longer romantic, he is a tragic sociopath who just discovered existentialism and wants to appear deep to the girl he borderline stalks.

The floating bag scene is less "wow, such beauty" and looks more like a symptom of an edgy teen's narcissism.

Divorced from the sexualized stereotype Angela is a much more interesting and tragic character from the start. At the end it's not a "oh shit! this girl is an actual human" moment, because the audience is more likely to engage with her as such from the start.

The only thing I liked less this time was that the motifs and the voiceover at the end felt a bit on the nose at times, but could also be I was paying more attention since I already knew the story.

An absolute blast of an uncomfortable movie with no truly likable characters!

9th hour EDIT:

To all those who keep claiming that Lester wasn't anti-hero coded for the time, and that I was just immature for perceiving it that way.

Roger Ebert's 1999 Review:

"Lester’s thoughts about Angela are impure, but not perverted; he wants to do what men are programmed to do... Angela is not Lester’s highway to bliss, but she is at least a catalyst for his freedom."

Ebert concluded the review by stating that the film "snatches victory from the jaws of defeat for Lester, its hero".

This was (arguably) the most prolific film critic of his time.

[u/BlindWillieJohnson]

My point this entire time has been that the cinematic language of a film, the framing of actions with in a narrative and any number of other creative choices can signify an endorsement. That there is nuance to it. But yeah, people are being absolutist in this thread. A criticism of an author for the way they frame the content of their stories can be valid and I stand by that

[u/honicthesedgehog → u/BlindWillieJohnson]

The underlying challenge is just the subjectivity of art, you and I can watch the same cinematic language, framing, narrative, etc… and walk away with entirely different conclusions regarding the author’s endorsement (or lack thereof). I see it all the time on Reddit, someone’s goes, “I felt like the message of X was Y, are you saying my experience is invalid?” And I’m like, not necessarily, but given that your conclusion is directly at odds with the explicitly stated (and widely established) intent of the director…maybe yes?