So I quickly scrapped the idea of making a Summer 2015 Moviecation List in favor of making a Spring 2015 Moviecation List! I mean the summer solstice is June 21st this year, so I have plenty of time.
Ah yes. The film that has been on my Netflix Watchlist since the dawn of time… basically. The 72nd Academy Awards Best Picture Winner, American Beauty. Luckily for me, I managed to get 16 years without knowing what the hell this movie was about! I mean… the cover is a girl’s stomach with a rose in front of it. I assumed it was about sex? Well I was right.
Kevin Spacey plays a boring, unappreciated, uninteresting middle class father named Lester Burnham. The beginning opens with Lester narrating that he has just died, a direct reference to another Moviecation film, Sunset Boulevard! It all ties together, people.
So Lester is living a meaningless and passionless life. His wife doesn’t have sex with him, his 16 year old daughter hates him. Everything is ordinary. Until he falls in love with his daughter’s friend, Angela.
Yes, cue roses. Angela is aware of this obsession, teasing Lester’s daughter, Jane, about Lester’s infatuation with her. The attraction provides a sort of sexual awakening for Lester, and his life changes courses dramatically, starting with his marriage.
Meanwhile, his wife, Carolyn, played by Annette Bening, is described as being soulless and shallow by almost every character in the movie. She herself begins a passionate relationship with a fellow real estate agent. And then her husband finally starts standing up for himself in their marriage, but in an almost emotionally abusive way.
Needless to say, the Burnham family is not the most supportive of one another.
While Jane struggles with issues of feeling unappreciated by her parents, Angela is continuously toying with the idea of being attracted to Lester.
Which sparks her relationship with the new next-door neighbor, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), a dark videographer and pot dealer with a ruthless and violently homophobic ex-Marine for a father.
So the film situates three new relationships in the world of a seemingly ordinary middle class family. American Beauty continually addresses the connection between sex and performance, or the act of putting on a show to seem a certain way to someone. Especially Angela, who prides herself on being sexually adventurous and mature, but also trying desperately to be special.
Lester’s lust for Angela is the driving force behind Lester’s change of character. He quits his job and begins working at a burger place, remembering the days of his youth when all he did was “party and get laid.” This rejection of his responsibilities as a father and a husband reveals his own selfishness, but also his desire to feel truly alive in a world the continually tries to put you a box of materialism and monotony. Even the pristine nature of the Burnham house, the perfect rose garden, the $4,000 couch, the staged family dinners with diagetic music creating an atmosphere of sophistication, everything works to represent the Burnham’s as being an ordinary, functional American family.
The writer, Alan Ball, has stated that two events inspired him to write the film. First, a plastic bag floating in the wind, which is included in the film as a shot that Ricky has and wants to show Jane because it made him aware of all of the beauty in the world. Second, the Amy Fisher trial in 1992, where a 17 year old high schooler shot her 35 year old boyfriend’s wife. This does not happen in the film, although Lester does die.
Critics have been widely positive although divided on the film, many stating that they have a different interpretation every time they watch it. This is what makes a truly great film, so I decided to offer mine.
American Beauty affirms the inherent struggle between middle class conformism and the individual desire to feel unique. The only way around this battle is to find beauty in the everyday world, and therefore breaking free of the imprisonment of the ordinary.
Well that’s just my thought. The 90s were crazy and masculinity was in crisis, so different people see different things in this unique story. American Beauty is #61 on the IMDb Top 250, and won 5 Oscars: Best Actor, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Picture.
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