Very good film

Rating: 8/10 (13 July 2001)

*WARNING MINOR SPOILERS* It seems that those who didn't like this film either belong to the same middle-class complacent stereotype as Lester Burnham and his family, are complete outsiders, or take too much from the scenes overflowing with teenage angst. Yes, these characters are stereotypical. The film does NOT pretend otherwise. In fact, they are the archetypical versions of their stereotypes! This exaggeration, however, merely serves to further the film's ultimate message and purpose! Didn't Dickens employ the use of archetypical character portraits for most of his serials, as well? Didn't this, too, help broaden the scope of his views, and lend to thousands of English readers an idea of the poverty of the working class? Well, the same exact goes for American Beauty, which paints the American middle-class lifestyle for what it is: a materialistic enterprise and empty ideal, replacing for its followers a longed-for sense of happiness with petty materialism and hopeless monetary fulfillment. THe film's characters are the idea, the American dream of hope and life which eventually, inevitably, surrenders itself to stasis and inertia. That's why the characters are so stereotypical! THey *are* the dream! In fact, they are an extended version of the dream. Anette Bening's character sells the dream itself, in the form of suburban real estate, and in her failure(which suggests to her the unthinkable notion that what she does for a living provides only emptiness) aspires to be an even higher, more unattainable ideal: the real-estate "king" who represents to her a synthetic notion of perfection and contentment, succcess. In fact, the man is an a**hole himself! As for the teenagers: yes, this is what middle-class teenagers are like! Believe me, I know. I am 17 years old. The contrived "beauty" of the floating bag does not lend any insight to the next-door neighbor, but rather attests to the pretense of these ordinary things being considered beautiful. Lester's obsession with the ordinary, everyday luxuries, the marijuana, the finetuning of his physical being, the reattachment to some idea to which he attributes "happiness," also seems empty and unfulfilling, ultimately leading to death(which is why the perpetrator is more or less tagged on as an afterthought: it doesn't matter!). This is the danger of creating the idea and fixing your reality to inertly reflect it. It is not real! Happiness is a completely internal phenomenon, achievable only by some direct realization of the self, not some contrived "idea" of the self as presented in such novels as "The Great Gatsby." This is the message of the film! Thank you. Have a nice day!