Top-notch 90s classic

Rating: Null/10 (29 April 2008)

'American Beauty' is a film that deals with death. The film is about Lester's final months. Lester doesn't know that he will die. We find this out within the first minute of the film. We know this just from the opening shot of his own daughter asking her boyfriend if he could kill him for her. We know right away that he is a loser, a geek, and a terrible father and husband.
The film details the lives of Lester and the people around him. Lester is married to Carolyn, a perfectionist and an emotional woman. Her and Lester hate each other. They are married with a child but they are not in love. Their daughter is Jane, who is spiteful of her parents behavior. Her parents constantly argue and betray each other. Why should she be happy and proud of her parents who aren't particularly supportive of her, though they try to be.
During one of their attempts to be involved more with their daughter's cheerleading, Lester falls for one of her friends, Angela, who he then constantly tries to woo and impress. This eventually leads him to change himself into the person he thinks that he wants to be. Meanwhile, the family has new neighbors. Frank, the homophobic father of Ricky, who is in love with Jane and videotapes her through his window. When Ricky becomes friends with Lester, Frank begins to suspect that he is gay.
'American Beauty' does something that isn't done enough in American films today. It actually makes us feel for the characters. None of these characters are bad people. Their decisions are bad, but all any of them want is for things to work out for themselves. They are all very good people. They just got too caught up in what they think society wants them to do or doesn't want them to do, though Lester rebels instead. He is sick of how society treats him and how everybody treats him. He goes a different way than he is expected and attempts to become his own person. He lusts after a teenager, despite the fact that he is middle-aged. A lot of middle-aged people secretly do this, however, it's only a serious problem if they act out on their desires. Does Lester do this? It's a difficult question to answer, though I guess, in a sense, he doesn't. But why does he lust after her? Does he lust after her because he is beautiful or because she is a mirror image of what beauty is supposed to apparently look like?
Carolyn is an interesting character. She tries incredibly hard to sell a house at her job and berates herself for failing. Is she past the point in which she isn't able to even feel anything anymore? Has she become that numb to her problems? These people are not close and their marriage doesn't mean anything. The only people in the whole movie who are actually happy are their two gay neighbors.
Jane wants breast augmentation surgery, but why? Her breasts already look pretty big. Does she think that people will like her if her breasts look fake? If they were any bigger, that's what they would look like. Why does she feel that people wants girls that look fake. She is already lusted after by Ricky. Ricky, at first, appears to be a really strange person. Angela speaks of rumors involving him going to a mental asylum. They may or may not be true, but that's not the point. The point is that he is unashamed of who he is and this makes him an interesting character to compare with all the other characters.
His father doesn't seem to realize that his son is on to his mental tricks and that Ricky only tells him what he wants to hear rather than speaking his mind about the issues that he brings up. Frank doesn't really hate homosexuals, but the way he was brought up allows him to think that way. This is especially evident in a surreal scene toward the end.
What I haven't mentioned is the sheer intensity of the film and the events leading up to the death of Lester. Indeed, the last thirty minutes of the film remain very suspenseful and revealing. They are full of so many bizarre coincidences and misinterpretations that it's actually quite funny to watch at times. It's a painful final act, but it's also a surprisingly insightful depiction and comment on loneliness and being hopeless in troubles. The last ten minutes are surprisingly honest and unique in that the viewer feels enlightened when, in reality, the things we are told are things we all know but don't realize that we know any of it until we are reminded by a film like this.
Do people need to watch films like this? Absolutely. How else are we able to be reminded of what we know about human existence. The things that are brought to light in the final minutes are not things we learn, but rather things we know and pick up on when we are infants and are developing. As babies, we make mistakes and learn from them. We don't remember those mistakes, but we remember what we know.
The philosophy behind this film is that a lot of us were brought up to not make mistakes and to learn what the parents and teachers teach in elementary school and in our early years as humans. But in this being done, we are not able to develop into our own people. Instead, we take what we can get, use it, and then grow up having learned nothing except that we should only know certain things. 'American Beauty' is one of the ideal examples of brilliant film-making.