American Beauty

Rating: 10/10 (1 May 2007)

In order to grasp the hard concepts of American Beauty we need to get an understanding of what the charters in the movie are like. The Burnham's and the Fits's are the two main families. These two families may seem like polar opposites but in actuality are the same. To the outside world, the Burnham family is happy everyday American family living the American dream. As we learn through the very detailed movie is that is not quite the truth. The truth is that the Burnham family is fake and that that Lester, Carolyn's husband, is just for show, and that Carolyn isn't faithful to her husband. We learn that Jane hates her parents, and that they she is like every other teenager, "Janie's a pretty typical teenager. Angry, insecure, confused. I wish I could tell her that's all going to pass, but I don't want to lie to her." (Lester Burnham narrating) Compared this to the Fits's family were the father is a marine colonel and is an angry man. His son Ricky is a distributed person who might me the most liberated person through out the whole movie or at least till the end. Barbra Fits the wife to Col. Fits, and Mother to Ricky, is a 40 something woman who never will be liberated. We presume that Barbra has gone through years of emotional abuse. You also have supporting rolls Jane's best friend Angela Hayes, Angela Hayes a girl everyone thinks is lose but in actuality she isn't.
American beauty is dismissed by some as a "bad film" "For nay-sayers, American Beauty is simply another version of the numbingly familiar story of individual liberation from social convention, with a few extra elements of sensationalism thrown in to up the commercial ante (masturbation! recreational drugs! borderline pedophilia!)" Others have said that "American Beauty, in my view however, is fool's gold. I would suggest that those who respond enthusiastically to the film are wither settling for far too little or, in the impatience for substantive material, are engaging in wishful thinking and largely inventing the film they would like to see madeThe clichés too are tedious. Why must the marine colonel be ramrod stiff and a repressed homosexual? This seems too familiar and too easy. There must be such figures with other, perhaps more highly evolved problems. Is it particularly fresh and original to reveal the apparently promiscuous Angela to be frightened, over-compensating virgin? Things we've seen before, countless times in other films, are simply shuffled around."
People say its good; don't realize the in-depth symbolism and the ever lasting realization of setting yourself free. Finally the major theme with the old saying "doesn't judge a book by its cover." "It is a wonderful psychological drama, a satire about the American community and about the American life; dark, painful irony and cynicism in the descriptions of life and characters; deep sarcasm on types of people in the community, habits of behavior such as "...if you want to succeed, you always have to seem successful..." or "never stop smiling", parasites of the community, and, most importantly, the treatment of people who are "different", who are "freaky" to some extent; and eventually, there is no character in the film that is not odd in its way, although we have to wait for the very ending of the film, to discover this." In order to start looking at this in-depth film we must start at the begging, with one of the best opening lines in film of all time. "My name is Lester Burnham. This is my neighborhood; this is my street; this is my life. I am 42 years old; in less than a year I will be dead. Of course I don't know that yet, and in a way, I am dead already." With this line we learn that the downfall of Lester has already begun, and this downfall will subsequently lead to his untimely death. At the start of the movie we learn that Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a 42 year old man living what seems like an ordinary life, but is from an ordinary life. We learn that Lester's home life is what people would consider normal, we learned that his wife (Carolyn) and him have not been happy in years and that his daughter (Jane). Throughout the movie, Lester is trying to get with Jane's "bff" (best friend) Angela Hayes, Angela a 16 year old cheerleader. By the end he does, and that's when the role of not judging a book by its cover comes in as he learns out that Angela is not a promiscuous person, and that she is anything but that, for she is a virgin. This concedes with another important part of the tale with Jane, meeting Ricky Fits, Ricky who is anything but normal, and people find him a outcast, finds true love with Jane. We also realize that Ricky was most likely the most liberated person in the begging of the film but by the end him and Jane would both be UN-liberated. Then we get to Carolyn story, of having a unfair life, and has more interest in material things, then actual family. With this in mind she ends of cheating on Lester, with "THE REALSTATE KING" (Buddy Kane) Finally we get to the person who kills Lester with a single gun shot to the back of the head. Col. Frank Fits USMC, from the begging of the film we are to believe that Col. Fits beats his son, and is a tough man, and is anti gay! But this is not true, in actuality Col. Fits is a closeted gay, and when he kisses Lester, (he saw Ricky and Lester doing "things" that looked like Ricky was giving Lester a blow-job) and his secret is revealed and not only is it revealed but that, Lester rejected him, Col. Fits kills Lester in order to hide the truth.