“An Ocean of Time”
I don’t care what anybody says (and I know there are naysayers out there), but the last seven minutes of Sam Mendes‘ American Beauty deliver one of the most mystically calming finales I’ve ever sat through, or will sit through. And the music! “Yellow leaves from the maple trees that lined our streets”…serenity itself. A new Bluray/DVD is about to hit the shelves.
Have only seen AB once, which is due mostly to an accident of circumstance — I loved it when I saw it in the theatre, but never made time for a repeat viewing. Though I still do remember the ending, and the plastic bag floating in the wind, all these years later.
Sorry Jeff, I feel the ending is an absolute cop out. Everything is there to soften the blow. Nostalgic black and white, slow-motion montage and caked over with the incredibly condescending voice-over… “you have no idea what I’m talking about I AM SURE… but don’t worry… you will. SOMEDAY.”
What does annoy about the film is that those last few moments, he does speak a lot of truth about how life could and should be lived. But I think Sam Mendes’s tone was all over the place in the film and at the end, it is ham fisted.
It was great in its day. It’s diminished a bit in the years since, and I’ve seen it so many times that I’ve vowed not to watch it again for another decade or so, but the trendy backlash against it is over-the-top. It’s a very decent film.
When I saw it back in 2000 I was irritated that it was nominated for Best Picture instead of Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, or Three Kings. Maybe if I give it another shot sometime my opinion would improve.
It’s funny, because in the DVD liner notes, Mendes discusses the film’s original, shot-but-deleted, ending — Wes Bentley and Thora Birch getting sent up for Kevin Spacey’s murder and (IIRC) sentenced to death for it.
Would’ve made the whole movie taste very different, come the 2000 awards season.
“Differently,” that should’ve been.
Long day.
A proper 90′s ending, when the audience actually knew they were watching a conclusion. Setup well, then wrap a bow on it.
Now it’s all cut to black, Sopranos/No Country/Serious Man style. Let the people talk about it. Not dissing either style. Just talking trends. Not sure what the new trend is, but i would buy stock in Indian dance number.
OT, amazing how much baggage Spacey has now. It’s hard to watch him emote in this. He was the perfect supporting actor. Then became a terrible leading man. And now he’s back to supporting, but still wears the ego of a lead, so he can’t even do that well anymore.
There’s nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you’re trying to be twenty-five.
Time for a remake with LexG in the Spacey part and some Dakota Power in the Suvari role.
GOOD IDEA.
And, yes, there is something tragic about being 50, about being 45, about being 40, about being 35… It’s depressing to be too old for cool people, too old to party with models, too old to score with 18 year old girls… Aging IS tragedy… Hair loss, going out of shape, working a shitty job you hate, lusting after women you’ll never fuck– it’s THE tragedy of life, something that plagues every man who’s ever lived and ever will.
Most grin, bear it and pretend that they’re happy with their lot, when they are absolutely not. A lucky 1% has the money to stave this off longer than the rest of us.
But it’s a tragedy every single day a man gets even a day older.
Doubly tragic if you wasted YOUR ENTIRE 20S AND 30S working depressing subtitling jobs typing in the words of shitty movies and tv shows instead of actually having a fun life.
Life sucks.
SPOILER ALERT:
no matter what you do, there’s a homicidal gay marine ready to kill you.
They even recut the film so he didn’t screw the cheerleader and he still gets slaughtered like a Slumber Party Massacre horny teen.
Will someone please pass the fucking asparagus?
I guess the ending was fine for what it was, but up until the very end, I kept thinking “and then what?” What happens when the severance package runs out? Spacey’s fate allowed him to avoid the consequences of everything that happened throughout the movie.
I’m sure we’d all love to quit our jobs, buy a 70s GTO, work at a fast food joint and smoke weed in the garage. I actually thought there was a more interesting movie in how he would have dealt with the consequences of that lifestyle. But that’s not the movie Mendes made, so you have to just roll with it.
Spacey was terrific in the film. He created a more raw and bitter extension of the kind of everyman character the late, great Jack Lemmon used to play. Lemmon was, of course, one his inspirations [as well as a father figure to Spacey in real life.]
Ang Lee did it earlier (and about a million times better) in ‘The Ice Storm’.
I find this movie morally repugnant. I don’t think I could watch it again without vomiting. It’s no exaggeration for me to say I lower my opinion of someone slightly when I hear they love American Beauty.
corey: Oh, and repressed gay people are always Nazis. And if you fuck a dummy with an audio recording, it totally’s the same as humping Annette Benning.
I really, really hated this movie. American Beauty has to be one of the worst Best Picture winners of all time. I even hated it more then Crash. Just awful.
I’ve always wondered why in the world the “yellow leaves from the maple trees that lined our street” were “remembered” in black and white. What gratuitous artsy-fartsy nonsense. Was Sam Mendes just not paying attention to what Conrad Hall had shot and what Alan Ball’s script was saying when he put the two together? (And you can bet hall shot the trees in color.) This over-directed piece of BROAD-WAY! theater (Mendes and cinema do not mix) undercuts itself by hard-selling its effects again and again.
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