American Beauty

The turn of the Millennium was a great time for doomsday films. Most of the disasters they predicted never came to pass. No humanity-destroying asteroid (Armageddon), no literal Matrix.

American Beauty stands as one that was genuinely prescient. We can give films too much credit for that - we rarely talk about the ones that spectacularly misfire. I don't know if I'd give director Sam Mendes credit for predicting the three themes in my video.

That's because the thesis of the original film feels different: how economic stability (a corporate job, a nice house in the suburbs, and a family, even if dysfunctional) feels boring and staid. It's also powerful as a primer on middle age - how that stability rubs uncomfortably against our younger years where things were chaotic, low stakes, and full of novelty. 

My video is about how those complaints now feel trivial in retrospect. Films of that era can feel self-indulgent because today's external context - division, geopolitical tensions, economic crisis - feels so overwhelming.

I talked about a modern Lester Burnham in the video, but that's an oxymoron. He'd look too privileged for a 2026 audience to relate to. American Beauty may be an excellent film, but future audiences might come to wonder what Lester had to be so despondent about.