Sep 17, 2003 06:02 PM
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(Updated Sep 17, 2003 06:08 PM)
BEAUTY LIES IN THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER ........as once said is the main theme of the film......
Beauty had never been shown or expressed so fantastically in any of the movies before ....A common self obssessed man with a very boring life... American Beauty follows the mid-life crisis/awakening of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey-one of my favs actors). Lester's wife is frigid and career driven, his teenage daughter thinks he's a geek, and his young-corporate-America boss wants him to beg for his uninspiring cubicle-bound job - your typical white suburban male. They think as a big LOSER......and nothing else...even his daughter jane thinks that he is of no use..............
Lester lives on a nice street, lined with nice trees, in a nice house, neighbored on one side by a perfectly charming and friendly gay couple , the other by retired Colonel, his shadow of a wife, and their just-a-little-too-smart-for-his-own-good son. Everything about Lester's life seems like the dysfunctionaly average norm. Until we look closer.
The people in lesters life slowly begin to dissolve into three dimensional human beings as the story progresses.The actual story starts when lester visits one of the janes cheerleading performances...... The first of these insights is when Lester becomes obsessed with his daughter's cheerleader girlfriend, Angela (played by Mena Suvari). He fantasizes about the sixteen year old doing a strip tease style cheer for him, culminating in a shower of rose petals floating around Lester's transfixed face. The picturising is so fantastic that when we see lester imaginig those things we feel that it is prefect beauty ...............The feelings that the teen awakens in Lester spark an fire in his feeling-less life. Lester begins to re-examine his career, his lifestyle, and his relationships with the people around him, often making changes in the most violent and disruptive - but to the viewing audience , most entertaining, - way.
As Lester goes through his transformation into the opposite extreme of the subservient husband and father, we gain closer insight into the minds of his wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), and daughter, Jane If Lester has been the apathetic partner in the marriage, Carolyn has been the one with passion...a passion for success. Carolyn gives the viewer the image of one who has stopped living for the sake of living but for the reward of ''being successful'', arranging their home and lives (even down to the smallest detail of the music they listen to during dinner) to fit her ideal of a Successful Family. Everything in Carolyn's life revolves around the idea and image of success, even driving her so far as to have an affair with the most successful man she knows, Buddy the Real Estate King ......From her motivational tapes and mantras to her perfectly manicured conversations with the neighbor, Carolyn is determined to be a success in life, even if she has to stop living it.
It is not hard to imagine the effect of such parent on young Jane - she hates them. She doesn't understand why she has to have such geeky parents rebels into a mood of self-deprecation and the general teen paradox of longing to be normal, but not just average. Jane clings to the coolest person she knows as her only link to beauty her everyday realm of reality. The person who idealizes beauty to Jane is the cheerleader Angela. It is interesting to see the contrast between the beauty that Jane sees in Angela versus the beauty her father sees (as a well sculpted fantasy girl). Perhaps the filmmaker is trying to communicate that beauty is in how you see things and not necessarily what is seen.
One continuing theme throughout this movie is, appropriately enough, beauty. Each character has lost - or, in the case of the younger generation of the film, has yet to find - the ability to see beauty. Everyday life, ambition, and societal expectations have clouded the lives of inherently passionate people so far that they no longer can remember what it is that they , or the people around them, is living for. When one of this group, Lester, begins to see the beauty in really living life, the people around him feel a kind of threat to their comfortable, if rehearsed, way of life. The only way to maintain their contrived existence is to extinguish the traitor among them, meaning certain death for Lester, as we are told so much in Lester's narrative.
As each character seems to be driven further and further to a breaking point, Lester remains calm and serene through the turmoil of his family and neighbors exploding around him. Lester has regained the ability to see the beauty in the odds they face. There are many quotes in the film that I would love to write about... like when lester is watching his daughter jane ready for the college....he thinks that HE COULD TELL HER THAT ALL THIS THINGS WOULD SOON PASS AWAY....some of the great dialogues I heard...and as soon as jane enters out her mother comments...TRYING TO LOOK BEAUTIFULL DEAR......was very good....ITS a must watch..................
This an extremely well written story confidence and beautifully portrayed by all involved - American Beauty is well written, well acted, and well filmed, earning it it's rightful place in Oscar's limelight. The advantage of writing a review of a film that has been showing for quite some time, is that I heard many varying opinions of the picture before having the pleasure of viewing it myself and forming my own opinion.
