American Beauty - The Citizen Kane of a Non-Practising Lawyer

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

Film criticism of 1999's American Beauty has taken over the Nick Rekieta thread for weeks after the wetbrained coomer kept perseverating about it night-after-night as his "favorite movie ever".

Cue Dear Feeder, who shared some of his own takes on the film on MATI despite never seeing the late 90s classic.

Josh in particular referenced a Devon Stack Odyssey review from 2018, which claims the movie is woven with themes of 90s corporate wageslave nihilism, the idea that striving to achieve is pointless because the universe is all powerful and full of entropy and that the gay screenwriter infused the usual gay subversive themes of the Mary Sue homo neighbors and the secretly gay repressed violent Conservative nazi.

I'm not sure I completely buy the nihilistic angle that Stack presents in his film critique, but thought it might be valuable to create a space outside of the ever-churning Rekieta thread to flush out any themes not yet beat to death any further.

 

[AltisticRight]

I don't agree with that guy's review at all, based on the snips he's shown alone. It's pretty obvious that he has some bias leading him to his conclusion. He talks about wanting to see that girl naked -- that never even crossed my mind. He projected his coombrained teenager thoughts.

I think it's just the movie version of games such as "the last of us (I think?)" and that other game where you play as some deaf character. A wannabe philosophical wordsalad that's nonsensical, pretends to be deep but really it's just another mediocre film.

Which is a joke. Why would this be Balldo's favourite film?

 

[Grift Garrison]

The movie was kind of prophetic in that Kevin Spacey really was a fag who lusted after teenagers.

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

I don't agree with that guy's review at all,

I think Devon Stack's proposal that the movie's overarching theme is nihilism, that fate is preordained and unchangeable so don't bother trying, is definitely a stretch.

I'm not that familiar with Stack, but I've seen him interviewed in some more alt-right type YT circles.

The Kevin Spacey/Lester Burnham character has a zen-like peace with how his life ended in the epilogue, even though I can accept arguments that this serenity is undeserved (particularly how he does nothing for his daughter all film).

I was probably too young to understand the corporate environment in the 90s. Even so, Lester hating his job, quitting and extorting his boss for severance with sexual harassment threats (I think this is how it went down, I get confused with the similar sequence with Ed Norton in Fight Club) was a very minor subplot in the movie.

He talks about wanting to see that girl naked -- that never even crossed my mind. He projected his coombrained teenager thoughts.

I wonder if it has to do with age.

I was roughly of a similar age as Stack when first viewing the film.

It's important to understand the teenage culture at the time.

Suvari was born in '79. She filmed American Pie over the summer of '98, which released July '99. She filmed American Beauty right after wrapping American Pie, wrapping in Feb '99 with a release in September, two months after American Pie did.

American Pie was a cultural icon for its target demographic, making Mena Suvari a new "it" girl at the time. She would've been 19-turning-20 during filming, but her character in the Spacey flick is apparently 17.

I don't know if tastes change over time with maturity or if beauty is just experienced differently through teenage eyes. But I would say her look doesn't hold up as well in current day, even with my advancing age factored in.

Her character is gangly thin with hardly any chest with a somewhat peculiar looking face as well.

In comparison, I think her fellow lead Tara Reid in American Pie holds up a lot better as naturally beautiful at the time in '99, even though she aged quickly and horribly soon thereafter.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

I don't agree with that guy's review at all, based on the snips he's shown alone. It's pretty obvious that he has some bias leading him to his conclusion. He talks about wanting to see that girl naked -- that never even crossed my mind. He projected his coombrained teenager thoughts.

I think it's just the movie version of games such as "the last of us (I think?)" and that other game where you play as some deaf character. A wannabe philosophical wordsalad that's nonsensical, pretends to be deep but really it's just another mediocre film.

Which is a joke. Why would this be Balldo's favourite film?

I agree that it’s nihilistic, but otherwise he’s trying to make a square peg fit a round hole. The movie is famously stapled together from like 5 scripts and it’s the product of a gay Buddhist (Buddhists are not welcoming of fags) basically imaging what a midlife crisis for a straight man is and projecting his insecurities on that.

It’s also Hollywood navel gazing and projection of what suburban life is. Stack is right about that. The only healthy individuals in the movie are the men who get shit on their balls.

The movie is fart huffing. It has that tone that insists on itself despite being half-baked.

 

[khaine]

I thought the only reason to watch this film was:

Spoiler: NSFW

 

[AltisticRight]

I'm not that familiar with Stack, but I've seen him interviewed in some more alt-right type YT circles.

Yeah. It's pretty obvious.

Conversely, you have Hbomberguy's plagiarism exposé. It was a good video tarnished by his drooling takes on politics. Oh no, among Internet Historian's 10 million+ audience, there's 5 who don't like Jews! That Republican plagiarised Michelle Obama's speech because she hates leftists and political opponents deserved it, blahblah. All this dumb shit when the rationale is pretty obvious, outsourced to an idiot and laziness.

Same as this film. It's just the producer huffing their own farts.

I think his review was pretty solid, I don't necessarily agree with his points based on what he's shown but it could do well with 100% less political self-inserts.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Someone once drunkenly told me that american beauty is the movie that popularized the idea that people who are (vehemently) against homosexuality are secretly gay. Does anyone think that might be true or false?

---

Also hearing Null's thoughts on the movie without having seen it was fun, as he got some critical ideas wrong. For example unlike lolita, where any flirtatiousness from lola is purely given to use from the unreliable narration of Humbert, the movie American beauty includes at least one scene where the teenager lusts/fawns after the Spacey character, to the annoyance of his daughter, the only person present at that time.

It's true that Spacey has complete dreams about her that aren't true like the dance sequence. But it isn't purely projection as it is likely in say Lolita.

 

[Pizdec]

Someone once drunkenly told me that american beauty is the movie that popularized the idea that people who are (vehemently) against homosexuality are secretly gay. Does anyone think that might be true or false?

I think there is some truth to that, as I've been told "he who yells fag the loudest usually is". If you go out of your way to gay bash, as in actually go out and shit talk in real life, you might have some unresolved feelings to work out.

Also I just want to point out, I love that we've just referred to Lester as "Spacey's character" because it turned out to be disgustingly close to reality as to what Spacey's preferences are.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Also I just want to point out, I love that we've just referred to Lester as "Spacey's character" because it turned out to be disgustingly close to reality as to what Spacey's preferences are.

Yeah I don't think these things are coincidences. I mean the allegations against Spacey are from around that time. I think it's hollyweirdo's having fun throwing it in people's faces. People on the set probably knew, much like everyone knew about Harvey Weinstein. It is very much like Spacey's "kill them with kindness" video a day before another of his accusers died.

A way to taunt victims and survivors while getting public adoration for it to really rub it in.

 

[Calandrino]

They could've saved the whole movie with a Usual Suspects twist where it turns out the main character was twisting the truth the whole time: he was actually gay, Mena Suvari was a teenage boy (and he didn't get cold feet about fucking him), he was paying that other boy to be his rentboy, the "secretly gay" father actually wasn't and the MC actually came onto him, etc.

Kevin Spacey is a gay rapist, the writer (Alan Ball) is gay and Alan Ball's father was a closeted gay man in a sham marriage. They were writing and acting what they knew, presented in a fantasy universe where e.g. middle aged married men who appear to be hooking up with teenage boys are actually victims of a silly misunderstanding. That's the actual subtext, more so than anything about middle class boredom or capitalism or whatever. "Wow, married life is so boring, I sure would rather be banging high school students... not that I ever would! But they'd totally want me to."

 

[Seafarer]

Someone once drunkenly told me that american beauty is the movie that popularized the idea that people who are (vehemently) against homosexuality are secretly gay. Does anyone think that might be true or false?

I think that line also comes from a few real-life cases of anti-LGBT pastors secretly being gay degenerates, although I’m not sure on the timeline.

 

[ShitLurker]

Which is a joke. Why would this be Balldo's favourite film?

Seeing how he had a perfectly normal life that many would envy yet seems to be very keen on sabotaging it to get some lust based highs, he certainly seems to feel a lot like Spacey's character.

 

[Otoya Yamaguchi]

the movie always confused. it wasnt a bad movie and was easy to follow, i just didnt get the point. what was i supposed to feel?

dude gets cheated on, wants to bang some jailbait and dies....faggy emo kid across the street with an asshole dad....i just didnt see what i was supposed to take away from the story

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Someone once drunkenly told me that american beauty is the movie that popularized the idea that people who are (vehemently) against homosexuality are secretly gay. Does anyone think that might be true or false?

Nah it's common on virtually every topic. If someone has overly strong opinion (especially for a problem that doesn't affect him personally), he probably does way worse shit than what he is criticizing, the joke of the anti gay conservative being caught fucking a guy in an airport bathroom exists for a reason. Heck Rekieta built himself on being a conservative family man and now is being caught going to Swinger parties.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Nah it's common on virtually every topic. If someone has overly strong opinion (especially for a problem that doesn't affect him personally), he probably does way worse shit than what he is criticizing, the joke of the anti gay conservative being caught fucking a guy in an airport bathroom exists for a reason. Heck Rekieta built himself on being a conservative family man and now is being caught going to Swinger parties.

I get that there can be a "lady doth protest too much" element, but this one in particular is so pervasive that it has gone far beyond the regular thing. It has gone a long way from an observation of a recurring stereotype that can be true, to a thought terminating cliche where anyone with critique of anything homosexual is accused of being secretly gay.

That's what I mean by popularizing. I'm looking back at orson scott card who was semi-cancelled for writing about his views on gay marriage during the time people were campaigning to make it legal (his views IIRC were that marriage was about children and should be heterosexual and in general that homosexuality should be slightly taboo to limit the societal damage it does without being too harsh on those who engage in it). Now if I google that and find 12 year old reddit threads on it, you have people crowing over how he must be a closet case himself.

I also think the "doesn't affect personally" is advocating for people being completely atomized and not care at all about society, or neighborhoods or communities. I think partly the joke you describe exists because it's true sometimes (looking at you Fuentes), but also partly because it's very politically expedient to be able to turn men's natural revulsion to homosexuality back against the person who tries to mitigate its harm.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

I remember there were jokes where people thought that Kevin‘s character was so feminized in American Beauty that people saw him in The Usual Suspects and wished he played the gay role as Keyzer Söze in character.

Now fast forward to today, it looks like continues to act as if he is a real life version of Frank Underwood from House of Cards.

 

[Lurker Child]

Someone once drunkenly told me that american beauty is the movie that popularized the idea that people who are (vehemently) against homosexuality are secretly gay. Does anyone think that might be true or false?

I don't think that the film popularized it, but it was certainly a notion that became popular around that time, namely because, as the other posters mention, cases of homosexual bashing priests being themselves homosexual, and it being a convenient "gotcha!" for fags and the homosexual adjacent.

I think there is some truth to that, as I've been told "he who yells fag the loudest usually is". If you go out of your way to gay bash, as in actually go out and shit talk in real life, you might have some unresolved feelings to work out.

Though I agree with this notion, I must note that it is very distorted by just how pervasive faggotry is in the modern America. In the 90s and 00s when people were not so privy to the vice, someone crusading against homosexuality might very likely be a fag with a chip on their shoulder. However, today, such a reaction could certainly be claimed to be proportional to the malady.

Also, thinking about it, I find it odd how criticizing homosexuals while being yourself homosexual is taken to invalidate anything you might have to say, certainly so by the LGBT. While there is a shame and a hypocrisy to be made of those who partake in the very vice they denounce, one would expect the most intimate, veritable and damning condemnation of homosexual culture to come from homosexuals themselves. You can be a hypocritical scoundrel, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong.

Kevin Spacey is a gay rapist, the writer (Alan Ball) is gay and Alan Ball's father was a closeted gay man in a sham marriage. They were writing and acting what they knew, presented in a fantasy universe where e.g. middle aged married men who appear to be hooking up with teenage boys are actually victims of a silly misunderstanding.

I remember hearing that the writer of the movie came from a broken home with a grudge for the nuclear family, but I'm not surprised to learn that he's gay. Straight men don't think twice about something that a fag would dwell on, and that really outs the writer as gay when you consider his insinuations in the script.


Speaking on the movie itself, it's one of those films that I enjoyed watching but never felt the compulsion to watch again. Watching Kevin Spacey work is definitely a big reason I liked watching it. Without him as lead, I doubt the drama could fend for itself. Much like "House of Cards" in that sense. Also, I'm not exactly sure why Nick Rekieta decided to preach about this film recently. Maybe he saw it, and watching a man realize he's middle aged and married to Hillary Clinton spoke with him on an existential level.

EDIT: Fun fact, CRP once said that watching this film was the point where he realized that Kevin Spacey was homosexual. According to CRP, in the fantasy scene of the father's teenage desire cheerleading, Kevin Spacey's seduced stupefaction was so artificial, so uninspired an act, that it could only come from a man who saw nothing sexual at all in a woman's figure.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Though I agree with this notion, I must note that it is very distorted by just how pervasive faggotry is in the modern America. In the 90s and 00s when people were not so privy to the vice, someone crusading against homosexuality might very likely be a fag with a chip on their shoulder. However, today, such a reaction could certainly be claimed to be proportional to the malady.

Considering what the results of pervasive faggotry look like, I don't think it's an entirely a fair characterization. If anything they understood what it would lead to better than others.

Also, I'm not exactly sure why Nick Rekieta decided to preach about this film recently.

I just saw a 6 month old elissa clip of Null critizing Nick over american beauty, so it's hardly a recent thing. Also I decided to rewatch some scenes, like him applying for a burger job: "I want a job with as little responsibility as possible". Couple that with man deeply unsatisfied about family life and a penchant for vices (drugs/teenage poon in the movie) and it's not that hard to see why nick likes it so much. The spacey character also doesn't try to fix any of his relationships, like the one with his wife. He just stops the last vestige of caring about her and just starts masturbating next to her despite it being clear she doesn't like that.

Also thinking about it, both this and fight club were written by fags and they both took effeminate ways of dealing with their boss (threatening false sexual claims, beating the self up). In contrast mike judge's office has a wimpy/nerdy scheme to steal money with a program. How many other movies are there with sticking it to the office job?

EDIT: Fun fact, CRP once said that watching this film was the point where he realized that Kevin Spacey was homosexual. According to CRP, in the fantasy scene of the father's teenage desire cheerleading, Kevin Spacey's seduced stupefaction was so artificial, so uninspired an act, that it could only come from a man who saw nothing sexual at all in a woman's figure.

Ha. Interesting thought. I felt the same about jerry maguire and Tom Cruise's kissing of Zellweger.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I get that there can be a "lady doth protest too much" element, but this one in particular is so pervasive that it has gone far beyond the regular thing. It has gone a long way from an observation of a recurring stereotype that can be true, to a thought terminating cliche where anyone with critique of anything homosexual is accused of being secretly gay.

That's what I mean by popularizing. I'm looking back at orson scott card who was semi-cancelled for writing about his views on gay marriage during the time people were campaigning to make it legal (his views IIRC were that marriage was about children and should be heterosexual and in general that homosexuality should be slightly taboo to limit the societal damage it does without being too harsh on those who engage in it). Now if I google that and find 12 year old reddit threads on it, you have people crowing over how he must be a closet case himself.

I also think the "doesn't affect personally" is advocating for people being completely atomized and not care at all about society, or neighborhoods or communities. I think partly the joke you describe exists because it's true sometimes (looking at you Fuentes), but also partly because it's very politically expedient to be able to turn men's natural revulsion to homosexuality back against the person who tries to mitigate its harm.

Is it still used nowadays by progressives? I thought they banned it for having bad implications and now say that you can only be anti gay by either being evil or internalised anti gayness.

At least in the past, the idea was that gay acceptance just means "they can do what they want in their own bedroom", but barring being a time traveler, you wouldn't predict the modern clown world, and how corporations and activists push kids into mental health disease.

As for "affect personality", I mean that it's an issue that you can say with good certainty will affect your community, which at least in the past, gay acceptance was seen as inoffensive. And even then I wouldn't say that all gays are to blame.

Also there's an Ender's Game thread in Art subforum and it has uncomfortable levels of child nudity in it