It's like 12 Angry Men, except there are 108 of them and they're not angry.
It's beautiful, but it doesn't take much to make the Catholic Church beautiful, and I don't think the movie has an aesthetic of its own. The sides of conflict are very simplistic and lack any nuance. But the music, pacing, and overall flow are very good.
It starts as a very decent social drama/comedy about a family driven by poverty to con a rich household into hiring them. Then an unexpected thriller element is added. But in the end I feel that the film kind of gets warped into its own fiction and forgets what it's really about — except South Korean social inequality, of course, which is presented in a curious light. I did enjoy watching this, but ended up somewhat confused with a number of choices. It's not vivid enough to be satire, but also too adventurous and metaphoric to be perceived as a realistic story. So what is it?
Kevin Spacey steals the show because he is an incredible actor, but honestly? Upon rewatch his "awakening" looks very shallow. Shaking smothering American suburbia is a feat worth celebrating, but it's not like smoking pot and drinking beer would have gotten him anywhere.
But the movie works so incredibly well as a whoddunit. We know Lester dies — but how and why? Red herrings are built up perfectly, as is the main twist, and this tension elevates American Beauty above ordinary drama. And it has so many memorable lines, too — I quoted "It's just a couch" more than once in my life.
It's just a loosely tied creepypasta needed to justify a string of disturbing images. But dang, those are awesome disturbing images.
