American Beauty: 25 Years On

Sam Mendes's 1999 Oscar winner has fallen out of favour with some viewers, but I think it still holds up well

Credit: Dreamworks

Warning: Contains spoilers

I first saw Sam Mendes’s American Beauty with my fiancée about a week before she became my wife in early 2000. We both thought it was brilliant at the time. In fact, it provided a sobering warning (don’t let your marriage become like the marriage in this film). But what we appreciated most were the darkly comic aspects and the strong performances.

In an exceptional year for cinema, I hadn’t wanted American Beauty to win Best Picture. The Sixth Sense would have been my choice. Or The Iron Giant. But neither stood a chance (and the latter wasn’t even nominated). The Academy often eschews genre fiction, so American Beauty was always the frontrunner. I didn’t particularly mind, as I thought it was an excellent film.

Do I still think it’s excellent? Having rewatched it for the first time in years, with awareness of the strong criticisms that have emerged about the subject matter in intervening decades (though other modern critics have taken a fairer approach), the answer is mostly yes. I don’t necessarily consider it a favourite. However, I think it’s still a strong mid-life crisis black comedy, in which Lester Burnham (an excellent Kevin Spacey) dynamites his life of quiet desperation to gripping and sometimes hilarious effect.