American Beauty- My Favourite Movie

Hello folksy folks. Today for our cinematic discussion, I shall be talking about my favourite live-action film- American Beauty. My favourite animated film is Lion King. My favourite cartoon ever is Dragonball Z. This is my favourtie movie of all time. I can’t really explain it. You know how you just like someone and you can’t explain it? Such is the case here. Let’s get into it.

Among drama films, this is in the top 10, if not top 5. I think what makes it so good is how dysfunctional everyone is. Our main character is Lester Burnham played by Kevin Spacey back when he was cool and yes he was cool, don’t lie, this movie was a year after A Bug’s Life where he impressively voiced Hopper. What helps make movies great is how close to real life they can be and this is such one of the those films. So we have the Burnham family- Lester, Carolyn, and Janie/Janey. Clearly, Lester’s marriage has become loveless and he seems not to care anymore about being a husband or father, he’s just given up accountability. The man feels like he’s just going through the motions now. Things may not be his fault that somewhere down the line, things just went awry with everyone but they’ve all seemed to have given up on each other and accepted the new status quo. Lester was done with how Carolyn treated him, bossing him around that he began acting hostile towards her but to her she had no clue what was up. With Janey, she began building resentment after feeling ignored by her parents. There are many true-to-life films but what makes American Beauty different from a film like, say, Schindler’s List is that the family dynamic is something we all deal with everyday where the Holocaust is not an everyday thing. Family dynamics are felt at the micro level, personal and individual. Fortunately for myself, my own personal life and family dynamics with my immediate family never became dysfunctional. Yes, my dad doesn’t live with us anymore but while he was here my family had disagreements and arguments like an average family would but would I say dysfunctional? No. I hope my own family with my son and daughter doesn’t become like that. I digress. American Beauty is a cinematic masterpiece. But why, as the Ryan Reynolds meme would say? It’s grounded, real-life, well-acted, serious, dramatic and just directed very well. Sam Mendes did a fine job. The cinematography contributes. If American Beauty was a comedy it’d be trash.

Let’s get into the characters. We got some weirdos up in here. The king of the weirdos is obviously Lester for reasons we’ll discuss later. Jane and Ricky are definitely the two star-crossed outcasts who find solace with each other but that doesn’t mean it’s condoned by me. Ricky is an outright creep and Jane’s friend Angela is truly standing on business on that front. Ricky is a voyeur there’s no doubt and has no shame about recording Jane in front of her. Angela may come off as conceited, self-centered, and selfish but her concerns for Jane against Ricky are fully warranted. The dude is a creep. Jane for some reason finds his stalker behavior attractive. Beats me as to why. Ricky delivers a savage insult to Angela near the end of the movie when Ricky asks Jane to leave with him to New York and Angela warns Jane against it. Jane defends Ricky who tells Angela that she only hangs with Jane to make herself feel better and that she’s ordinary. Watching the film recently, I don’t know if Angela deserved that. It’s not her who’s the loser, it’s actually Jane and Ricky. If the movie were a comedy, the bag-in-the-wind scene would be played for laughs no doubt. There’s no world where Ricky wins Jane. He got lucky, and yes, I know it’s a movie and it’s written this way because it’s a drama. Movies have a way of making us empathize with certain characters but it should be said that Ricky’s behaviour is deviant and irregular. I won’t lie, Ricky and Jane feel forced and seemed to have happened for plot’s sake. Even great movies have small flaws and that’s every single movie, even The Dark Knight or “Godfather” once you watch them enough times.

Let’s move onto our main man Lester. Our most disturbed character here. So his dilemma is that he’s had enough of his mundane life- his menial job, feeling ignored by Jane, and feeling bossed around by his strong-willed wife Carolyn. They just see him as a loser. Then one day, Lester has an inappropriate awakening and mid-life crisis (to say the least) and develops an infatuation for Jane’s friend Angela. Look, we cannot deny that temptation happens but it’s acting on that temptation that makes it wrong. Lester should’ve tried much harder to push away the thoughts he was having about Angela. Lester is so obsessed about her that he sneaks into his daughter’s room and calls her from Jane’s phonebook. Jane notices it and even confronts her dad about it who gets defensive and insults her, which he later recognizes as a goofy move on his part. Let’s talk about Carolyn. Angela calls Carolyn a phony. Is she right? Carolyn is not blameless in not trying to fix her marriage, she’s taken advantage of by her real estate competitor Buddy Kane. Lester even tries to get intimate with her again when they’re alone at home but he gets frustrated when he sees she’s so fixated on keeping her precious furniture clean and ruins the moment for him. Later on, Lester sees the both of them together while he’s serving them at a drive-thru saying it all makes sense. And somehow Carolyn feels she’s the victim? Maybe she didn’t understand why Lester was so hostile towards her and she became more distant because of it but to practice your shot at gun range to later gun down your husband because you felt victimized? I think you were being dramatic Carolyn. After Lester tells Carolyn off and that she can never tell him what to do ever again he feels he’s no longer a loser and doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him anymore.

You know to be honest, I don’t even know what I’m trying to get at here. I don’t want to bore you all with a summary of the movie. I want to get to the cookies and cream of the film, the why I like it, and like I said, I don’t know. It’s just one of those movies that isn’t overly rewatchable which I think just makes it better because you can come back to it every blue moon which makes it retain its value. I think what makes American Beauty great is how the story is told, the characters’ individual struggles, and that the film takes it seriously. Apparently not even Sam Mendes or Alan Ball really know what it’s truly about. They’ve admitted themselves that it’s open to interpretation. I love the simplicity of it. I think I have a habit of summarizing movies in posts and some are necessary. I’m trying to see how that benefits here as I write this. Maybe I don’t even need to get into it. Maybe I can’t explain why it’s so good to me. Once you watch it yourselves, ya’ll will either relate to me or not. It’s just a good movie. It’s simple, it’s told well, it’s got good drama, takes itself seriously, it’s a slice of life, and it’s engaging. I don’t think anymore can be said friends. Every character in the movie has a problem of some kind except maybe Ricky. Lester feels like a loser, Carolyn is done with Lester’s hostility, Jane feels unappreciated, Angela is insecure, and Colonel Frank Fitts (Ricky’s father) struggles with his homosexuality. Despite Lester being the main character, the movie doesn’t fully emphasize him and shows us what Carolyn, Janey, and Ricky all go through. Colonel Fitts and Angela are supporting characters for Ricky and Janey/Lester’s story threads respectively.

From the notes that I have, I want to talk about the conclusion and how it connects to the title of the movie. Some titles are more obviously named that others. The Matrix is about the Matrix. Star Wars is about cosmic conflicts. Planet of the Apes is named for the rise of apes as the dominant species. Lord of the Rings is about one master over all the magical rings and The Lion King is about exactly what the title is. What’s American Beauty about? What is the American Beauty? It sure can’t be the dysfunctional Burnham family. It can’t be about Ricky’s drug lifestyle. It can’t be about Lester’s unhappiness or the fact that he is killed by Colonel Fitts because Lester found out he was a closeted homosexual. I didn’t see an ounce of happiness through the film. It’s all anger, frustration, and sadness until……the very end. Lester seemed to be at peace after he was killed, narrating that life doesn’t flash before your eyes right before you die, it’s a single moment stretched on forever. Right before he died though he seemed to have found the meaning he had lost in his life again. Something sparked in him and apparently that was when Angela told him she was a virgin before they were about to you know. Once he heard that, he apparently realized she was just a child and stopped. I’m not saying that makes everything prior ok because it sure as hell doesn’t. Lester should have come to his senses long before that and Angela also has issues she needs to resolve. It’s unclear exactly what Lester was feeling and thinking right then and there, almost as if he was ready to try again right before Colonel Fits snuffed that chance away. I think the beauty is found only after Lester is at rest and he gets to see his entire life and appreciate what he had before it all changed and maybe wishing things could have stayed that way. Like I said before this film is very open to interpretation and to me, the film doesn’t live up to the title until the very end.

In conclusion, all I can say is watch the movie for yourself and form your own opinion. It’s my favourite movie, my brain just processes as such but I’m willing to bet I’m not alone in that many would agree it’s deserving of being an Oscar-winner, future Kevin Spacey controversy aside. Toodles.