American Beauty nice movie
American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as office worker Lester Burnham, who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter’s best friend, Angela (Mena Suvari). Annette Bening co-stars as Lester’s materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane; Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, and Allison Janney also feature. The film has been described by academics as a satire of American middle class notions of beauty and personal satisfaction; analysis has focused on the film’s explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, beauty, materialism, self-liberation, and redemption.Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a middle-aged magazine writer who despises his job. His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), is an ambitious real-estate broker; their sixteen-year-old daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), abhors her parents and has low self-esteem. The Burnhams’ new neighbors are retired United States Marine Corps Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper) and his introverted wife, Barbara (Allison Janney); their teenage son, Ricky (Wes Bentley), is a secret marijuana smoker and drug dealer whom the colonel subjects to a strict disciplinarian lifestyle. Ricky, who had been forced into a military academy and mental hospital, spends time recording his surroundings with a camcorder; he keeps dozens of taped videos in his bedroom.
Lester becomes infatuated with Jane’s cheerleader friend, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), after seeing her perform a half-time dance routine at a high school basketball game. He begins to have sexual fantasies about Angela, during which red rose petals are a recurring motif. Carolyn begins an affair with a business rival, Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher). When Lester is about to be laid off his job, he blackmails his boss for $60,000 and quits, taking employment serving fast food. He buys his dream car (a 1970 Pontiac Firebird) and starts working out after he overhears Angela tell Jane that she would find him sexually attractive if he improved his physique. He begins smoking marijuana bought from Ricky and flirts with Angela whenever she visits Jane. Jane becomes involved with Ricky and they bond over what Ricky considers the most beautiful imagery he has filmed: a plastic bag dancing in the wind.
Lester discovers Carolyn’s infidelity, but reacts indifferently. Buddy ends the affair, saying he is facing an expensive divorce. Frank becomes suspicious of Lester and Ricky’s friendship and finds his son’s footage of Lester lifting weights while nude, which Ricky captured by chance and leads Frank to believe Ricky is gay. Carolyn becomes distraught, loads a gun, and drives home. That night, after watching Ricky and Lester through Lester’s garage window, Frank mistakenly concludes the pair are sexually involved. He later beats Ricky and after Ricky falsely admits the charge, he goads his father into kicking him out of the family home. Ricky convinces Jane to flee with him to New York City and tells the vain Angela she is ordinary.Frank confronts Lester and attempts to kiss him; Lester rebuffs the colonel, who leaves. Lester finds a distraught Angela, who begins to seduce him. After learning that Angela is a virgin, Lester stops and comforts her; the pair instead bond over their shared frustrations. Angela goes to the bathroom and Lester smiles at a family photograph of himself, his wife, and Jane in happier times in his kitchen. A gunshot sounds and blood splatters on the wall. Ricky and Jane find Lester’s body. Carolyn is seen crying in the bedroom, and Frank returns home, bloodied, a gun missing from his collection. Lester’s closing narration describes meaningful experiences during his life; he says that despite his death he is happy, as there’s so much beauty in the world.
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Like other American films of 1999—such as Fight Club, Bringing Out the Dead and Magnolia—American Beauty instructs its audience to “lead more meaningful lives”. The film argues the case against conformity, but does not deny that people need and want it; even the gay characters just want to fit in. Jim and Jim, the Burnhams’ other neighbors, are a satire of “gay bourgeois coupledom”, who “invest in the numbing sameness” that the film criticizes in heterosexual couples. The feminist academic and author Sally R. Munt argues that American Beauty uses its “art house” trappings to direct its message of non-conformity primarily to the middle classes, and that this approach is a “cliché of bourgeois preoccupation … the underlying premise being that the luxury of finding an individual ‘self’ through denial and renunciation is always open to those wealthy enough to choose, and sly enough to present themselves sympathetically as a rebel.”Professor Roy M. Anker argues that the film’s thematic center is its direction to the audience to “look closer”. The opening combines an unfamiliar viewpoint of the Burnhams’ neighborhood with Lester’s narrated admission that he will soon die, forcing audiences to consider their own mortality and the beauty around them. It also sets a series of mysteries; Anker asks, “from what place exactly, and from what state of being, is he telling this story? … if he’s already dead, why bother with whatever it is he wishes to tell about his last year of being alive? … There is also the question of how Lester has died—or will die.” Anker believes the preceding scene—Jane’s discussion with Ricky about the possibility of his killing her father—adds further mystery. Professor Ann C. Hall disagrees; she says by presenting an early resolution to the mystery, the film allows the audience to put it aside “to view the film and its philosophical issues”.
Through this examination of Lester’s life, rebirth and death, American Beauty satirizes American middle class notions of meaning, beauty and satisfaction. Even Lester’s transformation only comes about because of the possibility of sex with Angela; he therefore remains a “willing devotee of the popular media’s exultation of pubescent male sexuality as a route to personal wholeness”. Carolyn is similarly driven by conventional views of happiness; from her belief in “house beautiful” domestic bliss to her car and gardening outfit, Carolyn’s domain is a “fetching American millennial vision of Pleasantville, or Eden”. The Burnhams are unaware that they are “materialists philosophically, and devout consumers ethically” who expect the “rudiments of American beauty” to give them happiness. Anker argues that “they are helpless in the face of the prettified economic and sexual stereotypes … that they and their culture have designated for their salvation.”The film presents Ricky as its “visionary … its spiritual and mystical center”. He sees beauty in the minutiae of everyday life, videoing as much as he can for fear of missing it. He shows Jane what he considers the most beautiful thing he has filmed: a plastic bag, tossing in the wind in front of a wall. He says capturing the moment was when he realized that there was “an entire life behind things”; he feels that “sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it … and my heart is going to cave in.” Anker argues that Ricky, in looking past the “cultural dross”, has “grasped the radiant splendor of the created world” to see God. As the film progresses, the Burnhams move closer to Ricky’s view of the world. Lester only forswears personal satisfaction at the film’s end. On the cusp of having sex with Angela, he returns to himself after she admits her virginity. Suddenly confronted with a child, he begins to treat her as a daughter; in doing so Lester sees himself, Angela and his family “for the poor and fragile but wondrous creatures they are”. He looks at a picture of his family in happier times, and dies having had an epiphany that infuses him with “wonder, joy, and soul-shaking gratitude”—he has finally seen the world as it is.
According to Patti Bellantoni, colors are used symbolically throughout the film, none more so than red, which is an important thematic signature that drives the story and “Lester’s arc”. First seen in drab colors that reflect his passivity, Lester surrounds himself with red as he regains his individuality. The American Beauty rose is repeatedly used as symbol; when Lester fantasizes about Angela, she is usually naked and surrounded by rose petals. In these scenes, the rose symbolizes Lester’s desire for her. When associated with Carolyn, the rose represents a “façade for suburban success”. Roses are included in almost every shot inside the Burnhams’ home, where they signify “a mask covering a bleak, unbeautiful reality”. Carolyn feels that “as long as there can be roses, all is well”. She cuts the roses and puts them in vases, where they adorn her “meretricious vision of what makes for beauty” and begin to die. The roses in the vase in the Angela–Lester seduction scene symbolize Lester’s previous life and Carolyn; the camera pushes in as Lester and Angela get closer, finally taking the roses—and thus Carolyn—out of the shot. Lester’s epiphany at the end of the film is expressed via rain and the use of red, building to a crescendo that is a deliberate contrast to the release Lester feels. The constant use of red “lulls [the audience] subliminally” into becoming used to it; consequently, it leaves the audience unprepared when Lester is shot and his blood spatters on the wall.
