American Beauty's Suburbia

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2002)

In the opening minutes of the film American Beauty, there is a close-up shot of a red, vibrant rose. No sooner has the viewer had enough time to appreciate the rose, when a pair of clippers comes into the frame and snips off the flower. It is in this scene that the voice of Lester Burnham introduces the viewers to his wife Carolyn. He dryly remarks, `That's my wife Carolyn. See the way the handle on those pruning shears matches her gardening clogs? That's not an accident.' American Beauty's writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes waste no time placing us into the world of upper middle class, suburban America. The neighborhood is uniformly pristine: white picket fences, lush green lawns, and sport utility vehicles parked in driveways. We have been placed in a world similar to the one inhabited by the Cleavers, the Nelsons, and the Bradys. This is the American ideal that Eisenhower introduced, Ronald Reagan promised and Bill Clinton delivered. This is the world that Lester Burnham yearns to escape. For all its uniformity, normalcy and security, the suburban landscape is littered with dysfunction, infidelity and boredom.
In his review of the American Beauty screenplay, Peter N. Chumo writes, `The main narrative thread of the script is Lester's regeneration, which is sparked by one of his daughter's classmates, Angela Hayes, the archetypal American dream girl' with whom he is immediately smitten when he sees her performing in a cheerleader routine. While Lester obviously lusts after Angela and has vibrant, literally rose-tinted dreams about her, she becomes more than a sexual fantasy. She reawakens in Lester a zest for life that the years have knocked out of him.' Lester's feelings for Angela are completely inappropriate. But unlike Professor Humbert Humbert in Kubrick's adaptation of Lolita, Lester's lust is born out of his sexual frustration with his career-obsessed wife, who refuses to have anything to do with him sexually. When his wife catches him masturbating, she is disgusted by his behavior and questions the validity of their marriage. Lester responds, `This hasn't been a marriage for years. But you were happy as long as I kept my mouth shut. Well, guess what? I've changed. And the new me whacks off when he feels horny, because you're obviously not going to help me out in that department.' Lester's re-awakening is more a return to his youth. A return to a time when he didn't have responsibilities and the future seemed full of opportunities. His transformation is signaled by his use of marijuana and his desire to become more attractive to Angela by becoming physically fit.
The darker message that lies underneath American Beauty's comic tone can be unveiled simply by adhering to the film's tag line `look closer'. A closer inspection into the Burnham household would reveal that although it appears they have achieved the American dream, in fact, they are steeped in dysfunction; as are their neighbors, Col. Fitts, his shut-down wife, Barbara, and voyeur son, Ricky. American Beauty moves beyond being a story about Lester's mid life crisis and becomes a story about self-examination. This message of looking closer and digging deeper is expressed best by Ricky Fitts when he describes the day he videotaped a plastic bag floating in the breeze, `That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredible benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever.' American Beauty in many ways shares many of the same dark qualities as David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Lynch stripped away at the façade of suburbia to reveal a sinister evil. Lynch began his film with his camera gently moving down a very normal neighborhood street featuring white picket fences, lush green lawns and friendly neighbors. The camera slowly sinks into one of the many green lawns and tunnels its way deep into the dirt, where beetles can be seen swarming under the surface.
Another masterful theme that American Beauty portrays is real beauty by forcing us to re-examine all the things we hold dear: sex, career, home, cars, guns, happiness and death. In the opening sequence of the film Lester's voice tells us that he is dead. But, he is very much at peace with his after-life and by telling us the story of his last year on earth we too will have a similar peace. This is It's A Wonderful Life in reverse. Lester doesn't get Clarence the Angel to save him; only death will give him the distance to appreciate true beauty. Lester says: `I guess I could be pretty p***ed off about what happened to me but it's hard to stay mad, when there is so much beauty in the world.' Through death, Lester escapes the conformity, vanity and daily drudgery of suburbia.
Screenwriter Alan Ball wrote that his inspiration for American Beauty came from the Amy Fisher case. The Amy Fisher story is a tale of lust and attempted murder in middle-class suburbia. Ball wrote, `The media circus had begun, and the story was swiftly being reduced to its most lurid elements, with a cast of cardboard stock characters acting on their basest impulses. But underneath it all were real human lives that had gone horribly astray...'
American Beauty's director, Sam Mendes, wrote this description of the film, `It was a kaleidoscopic journey through American suburbia, and a hugely visually articulate one at that. It was a series of love stories. It was about imprisonment in the cages we all make for ourselves and our hoped-for escape.' American Beauty won Oscars for best film, best original screenplay, best actor and best cinematography at the nineteen ninety-nine Academy Awards. Without question, it struck a nerve in this country. It gave us a darkly comic tragedy about the price attached to materialism as a way of life. Like the tag line says `look closer' and real beauty will show itself.