Brief movie review: American Beauty (1999)

This film, highly recommended by my favourite film afficienado, starts Kevin Spacey and Anette Bening, two of my favourite actors.  The recommendation I got warned me that this was a Hollywood film trying to be of the "independent" genre, and failing miserably, particularly with the neat and tidy ending.  But still, she said, it was worth seeing.

She was right. It is worth seeing.  But I didn't like it as much as she did.  Or as much as my life partner did.  In fact, there were many things I didn't like about it at all.  In particular,I hated the narrative by Kevin Spacey.  If as protagonist, his character didn't get to tell us everything important, then why not re-work the screenplay instead of insisting on having him show us, the viewers, what to watch for before it happened?

Anette Benning played an astonishingly unsympathetic charadter, I thought.  I mean, the male protagonist was nothing to write home about, but Anette had no redeeming features.  Martha Stewart meets the Stepford Wives meets The Scream.  And the only other adult woman in the film was equally unsatisfying: I don't think we ever found out her name, much less the reason for her largely comatose state.

The saving grace of the film was the young leads: the love interest. They were quirky and honest.  Unlike the adults in the film.   Thank heavens for some genuine characters, I say!

In my adolescence, I was sure I would never do drugs.  Of course, I was also sure I'd never do sex, and that turned out to be wrong.  But drugs was different.  I knew.  Heck, I didn't even take aspirin.  I didn't have my mouth frozen when I had cavities filled.  I was pure!

Just for the record, to this day, I have never used an illegal substance. Not that I'm all that proud of that: I just never had an opportunity when I was young enough to be truly interested.  But I have done drugs.  Legal ones.   Prescription drugs.  And I continue to "do" them.  In fact, they save my  physical life, and -- I suspect -- my emotional life, too.

It's odd how it's "cool" to do illegal drugs (even now, even at my age!). It is decidedly not cool to use legal prescription drugs.   Particularly anti-depressants.

Most people understand when I use asthma drugs in front of them.   (I'm a four-times-a-day puffer.)  Asthma kills.  And somehow, it's not my fault that I have asthma.  (Note: this would not be true, if I  were still a smoker.  I mean, it would be true, in that my asthma is caused by a lung disease that is not related to smoking.  But I would still be held responsible for my own disease were I foolish enough to smoke as well.)

There is, however, a great deal more skepticism, if not derision, for anti-depressants.  I should know. I resisted my therapist's suggestion that I try them for years.  Three years, in fact.  I wasn't doing all that badly.  I saw her only once a month, and I felt mostly okay.  A little dreary, I suppose.   But nothing horrible.  Low-level depression, she said.  I'd had it since childhood, she guessed.  But, I resisted.  It was my lot in life, after all, and who was I to slack off, going through life drugged on the "happy drug"?

Well, I finally tried it.  Aside from a vastly but gradually diminshed sex drive (a not insignificant side-effect!), the effects were all positive.   I wasn't happy all the time.  I was relieved to find out that I still had moments when I wanted to strangle my life partner (figuratively speaking, of course!).   But I didn't yell at him for now reason.  I didn't feel defeated before I even started some days, for no discernable reason.  I was not depressed! Hallelujah!

Still, after several years on Prozac, I was tired of being the one to respond to the Prozac jokes with "Works for me!", and answering related questions, or reassuring the suddenly embarassed joke-teller.  I was tired of feeling like I couldn't make it on my own.  So I switched drugs (hoping to recover my sex drive at least), and decided to not take the new one for a while.  I was excited.   I thought I wasn't depressed and I wasn't taking drugs.  I was finally saying "no" again.  But, it was not a successful experiment.

Within a week, I was weary and depressed.  I was picking fights with my life partner, for no reason.  This wasn't pent-up anger finally overflowing. This was frustration, restlessnesss, being uncomfortable in my own skin, feeling like strong, persistent emotional reality every day.  I was depressed. Again.   Even though I was feeling like uncertaintly was okay. Like I didn't need to be in control.  Like the stress of this growing a business thing is okay.  I was still depressed, and I was taking it out on me and my life partner.  No-one else could even tell.

So, today, I started saying "yes" again. Or at least "maybe".  I know that makes me a "cop-out" to some.  Someone who prefers emotional sedation to the high's and low's of a lifetime of just saying "no" to drugs.  I sometimes agree with that view, even as I make the choice I must for my own mental and emotional health, and that of those immediately around me.   Such ambivalence is not optimal, but sometimes "no" has to become "yes" and even "maybe".  And this is one of those times. For me. For now.

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