On American Beauty, and some other stuff


a critic who didn't like the film

This wasn't like a Mamet film (whose resume I believe we discussed), 
where I love every minute, then the last ten bring it all to nought.  
I had squirming-with-discomfort reactions to the movie throughout 
(and not the "the subject matter is uncomfortable or my 
Weltanschaung, as Ignatius J Reilly would put it, is being 
challenged," I can't be offended by anything other than the theatric 
equivalent of bad writing).  Upon reading Ebert's review of the movie 
(he gave it four stars out of four--the review was quite a pleasure, 
in fact much better than the movie [an aside within an aside here 
{how Borgesian}:  I often find myself enormously pleased with Ebert's 
reviews, even when he is at the opposite end of the spectrum from 
me.  In his review of _Dead Man_, for instance, which he gave one and 
a half stars, he criticized the "unfortunate score by Neil Young, 
which for the film's final 30 minutes sounds like nothing so much as 
a man repeatedly dropping his guitar."  What an enjoyable line, even 
though I thought the score was the only thing Young has ever done 
{perhaps with the exception of Harvest Moon} that shouldn't have been 
categorized as a misdemeanor offense.  And of course, _Dead Man_ was 
an unbelievably wonderful film]), I classified several of them.  One 
was that the film at times did not know what it wanted to say, and so 
gave conflicting signals (more on this later).  Another was cliched 
technique (I can^Òt even bring myself to call the military character^Òs 
repressed homosexuality a cliche--there are things beyond cliche, to 
the point where you don^Òt, can^Òt even expect them...and this was one, 
I never saw it coming.  I went and re-watched _The Great Santini_ 
after seeing Am Beaut to enjoy a more complex, empathetic, 
perceptive, and of course satisfying view of the overbearing military 
father); the example that springs to mind is the cheerleader routine 
in the gymnasium, the one where Spacey drops his jaw at the girl, 
suddenly she^Òs the only cheerleader on the floor (where did the 
others go?), suddenly he^Òs the only spectator in the stands (did they 
all leave?  what the hey?  what the hell is up with those 
spotlights??)  In case this was the one confusing portion in an 
otherwise enjoyable film, allow me to explain.  When Spacey saw her, 
he experienced an instant infatuation, perhaps bordering on an 
infatuated love.  So intensely was his perception focused on this 
little thing that all other stimuli fell out of his consciousness.  
You see, it was _as if_ he and she were alone in the gym.  Their 
filmatic mutual wonderland of solitude was a _metaphor_ for his 
emotional state at that moment.  Do you understand.  No?  It^Òs ahht.  
Got it now?  Ok.  Actually, it was in reality not even ahhtistic, it 
was nothing more than a groping attempt, a crib of techniques the 
director probably thought were interesting, used to communicate what 
was happening; the attempt was borne of two lackings, trust and 
ability.  A final note on this scene:  I cringed when Thora Birch 
kicked her hat in the middle of their routine, I thought it was going 
to be a ^Óchild suffers humiliation in front of parents,^Ô but was 
relieved to find that nothing more came of it.

My god, I love tits.  Though I have no significant preference for 
large ones over small ones, the previous statement will segue into 
those spectacular huge ones (do you have any preferred appellation 
for breassesses?  I^Òd love to have an arsenal at my disposal, but 
don^Òt like cans, knockers, casabas, kaballahs, hooters [ugh], etc.  I 
use the words tits and pussy when referring to the appropriate 
secondary and primary female sexual characteristics.  Any helpful 
suggestions for improving my vocabulary here would be appreciated) on 
Birch.  They were easily ^ÓD^Òs^Ô as our oppressive consumo-patria-
milito-hegemon-industria-cartesian society _^Ónames^Ô_ them, as Adam _
^Ónamed^Ô_ the proto-womyn and non-humyn forms of life in the world, 
thus shackling their identities to his peculiar percepto-organization 
of his ^Óreality.^Ô  And yet, she was saving for implants or a boob job 
(boobs, ugh).  Ebert noted this, but enjoyed it (^Ó[she is] saving up 
for breast implants even though augmentation is clearly unnecessary; 
perhaps her motivation is not to become more desirable to men, but to 
make them miserable about what they can't have^Ô).  He was far too 
generous.  They either didn^Òt notice or, far more likely, since there 
was most certainly a perceptive and honest A.D. or somesuchother on 
the set who pointed this out, did not care.  Did you notice how Birch 
was dressed in clothing that made her breasts look much smaller?  
Here was the logic behind it:  we^Òll keep her flat for the whole 
movie, and when they finally get a gander at those phat phucking 
titties, they^Òll be too punchy to connect thought A to thought B--
we're fine, babe.  No babe, it wasn^Òt fine.  The preceding complain 
was, upon reflection, classified under the ^ÓI don^Òt buy it,^Ô drawer, 
a complaint always fatal to an artistic effort.

When boy neighbor was leering at Kevin Spacey^Òs body at the end of 
the movie (he sees beauty, remember?), I thought his head was going 
to explode from the intensity of acting effort.  I cannot, however, 
muster a sweeping critique of the acting.

Much earlier, I said I^Òd get back to the movie sending conflicting 
cues to the audience.  When Bening^Òs character fails to sell the 
house, closes the drapes behind her, and begins to weep in the dark, 
it hit me hard.  Assuming their intention was to make the audience 
_feel_ her despair, it was very effective.  Then she began to hit 
herself, telling herself to shut up.  The entire theater (filled) 
began to laugh.  I had a sickness in my stomach, which I first 
attributed to the audiences laughter at a scene where laughter was so 
inappropriate (how unpopulist of me^×yeahyeah fuck off).  I soon 
checked myself, however, as I realized that, thought still not 
appropriate, the laughter was understandable in that the scene was 
giving extremely conflicting signals as to what it was trying to do.  
Let^Òs ignore for the moment that, in a film which is not self-
referential, making you aware that it is giving off any kind of 
signals at all signifies failure.  The spell, clearly, had been 
broken.  You absolutely do not do that in a scene, shatter the mood 
into which you have led the audience for no ostensible reason other 
than that you could think of nothing else to do.  In retrospect, this 
was the scene in which I began to feel quite troubled toward the film.

I have, however, made some spectacular critical whiffs, however, I 
loathed _True Romance_ when first I saw it.  Oh, I had a rush when I 
was pissing after the movie.  See, there was this trailer this summer 
for a Dreamworks pic that looked extremely interesting, but I quickly 
forgot most of it, all I remembered was videotape (in retrospect, a 
Soderbergian cliche?  Perhaps I^Òm too critical here, but perhaps also 
Tarantino would pick up the banner I have so quickly dropped), an 
actor I really liked, and very interesting color schemes...but when I 
saw the trailer, I couldn^Òt reconcile how it appeared with its being 
a Dreamworks project.  When the Dreamworks insignia was projected 
onto the screen before the film began, again (though not remembering 
the trailer) I asked myself, _I^Òm going to see a Dreamworks 
production?_  Then after the film, in the aforementioned pisser, I 
remembered the trailer and everything fit.  Its always a good 
feeling, reconciling what were once mysteries.


why I put this here, and how....

Hyper-jump: [Corpse] [Head] [Eye] [Mail]