When I saw the first trailer for American Beauty a couple of years ago, I said, "Hmm. Looks like an American version of 'Bliss'." Which it was, only not as good and not as brave.
"Harry Joy was a man who liked to tell stories," says the narrator, and this film is full of stories: Histories told through incident, Realities literally warped by perception, Fantasies anchored in Truth, etc. "In New York, there are towers of glass, and the Devil himself drives a big Cadillac Limousine right down Fifth Avenue."
Surreal and enervating, informed by Dante's Inferno and with an ending you never saw coming, this has been one of my very favorite films for sixteen years. It's where I got the name "Mister Joy" ("No, you are NOT Harry Joy, you are MISter Joy.").
Too bad Lester Burnham didn't see it when he was a younger man.
"Harry Joy was a man who liked to tell stories," says the narrator, and this film is full of stories: Histories told through incident, Realities literally warped by perception, Fantasies anchored in Truth, etc. "In New York, there are towers of glass, and the Devil himself drives a big Cadillac Limousine right down Fifth Avenue."
Surreal and enervating, informed by Dante's Inferno and with an ending you never saw coming, this has been one of my very favorite films for sixteen years. It's where I got the name "Mister Joy" ("No, you are NOT Harry Joy, you are MISter Joy.").
Too bad Lester Burnham didn't see it when he was a younger man.