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Rating: Null/10 (17 January 2007)

Angela Hayes is the typical concept of an American Beauty, blond hair and blue eyes and projects an image of modernity and of liberation. She has an image of a slut. She goes around telling her friends that she has done it with a photographer. After all, according to her that's the way it is done. She likes the attention. It is her way of rising up to the mediocrity. If she walks in to a room and people stare at her it gives her the confidence to believe that indeed she is beautiful. It assures her that is neither ordinary nor boring and can there for be a model like what she always dreamed of. Angela's confidence on herself is a mere fictitious impression of what it is really she wants to become. Yet, Angela is really vulnerable.
Lester Burnham, father of Jane, friend of Angela became infatuated with Angela after seeing her for the first time cheer dancing. He already had a sexual desire for her. That instant attraction somehow made a U-turn in Lester's life. At first he wanted to know more about Angela. He began making calls then hanging up. Then he over hear a conversation that Jane and Angela was having. Angela finds him cute and thinks he needs to work out. Lester then wanted to look good naked. He began jogging everyday and lifting weights. He wanted Angela to feel what it was that he was feeling, that sexual desire. He wanted to look good for her. H wanted to be beautiful so that he can get into Angela's pants.
Lester began realize to the things around him are not like what it used to be. His family was not one that was happy. His wife was a self-centered career woman and he was not anymore talking to his daughter. They were not in like in the pictures where they were smiling. His wife and his daughter always got what they wanted and nobody seemed to take notice of him anymore. He doesn't complain about what they were doing. He was tired of it. He relieved his youth first by quitting his high paying job for work at a fast food chain then buying himself a sports car. A Pontiac Firebird, a car which his cousin had when he was younger, something he always wanted.
Lester desires for Angela was coming to life one night when he found her crying. Lester comforted her. As the sexual tension heats up, Angela told Lester that it was her first time. Lester finely saw the innocence in Angela. She was just like Jane still a child in many ways. In the end Lester realizes that Carolyn and Jane are the beauty that is in his life already. He was contented with the things he had in life.
Jane is a brunette girl who is usually with Angela. Ricky Fits their new next door neighbor seems to be always filming her. Jane is interesting for Ricky; she is beautiful, a solemn girl who lives next door. At first, when he films her appears to be irritated but when she turns her back and he looks closer she is smiling. She likes it.
Ricky's concept of beautiful is whatever that is can be seen in this world. He is able to look beyond that traditional notion of beauty and finds it in uncommon places. Like a dead bird or plastic bag, he sees things life in perspective as beautiful. He lives not by aesthetic subjectivism. What one person can find ugly, another may find as attractive. It is like God looks through him as he sees beauty. That's why he films things in his everyday.
Time moves forever in one direction and it cannot be stopped. In a physical sense the past and the future don't exist. Everything we do, everything we achieve, every bit of happiness we experience -- they are all eventually buried in the past by time. Recording subjective beauty is a way by which one can challenge to recover beauty from the past into the present because time eventually destroys all beauty.
The blond girl and the black haired are the two comparisons between the two types of beauty. Angela's notion of herself as attractive is stereotypical of those blond and blue eyes. She fixes herself and brags to Jane how many times she has done it with guys and stuff; giving surety of herself of how good she really looks and making more Jane insecure. Jane however does not care about her looks. Jane finds consolation with Ricky and also finds out they have a lot in common. Ricky who sees much beauty in this world also sees her as beautiful.
The title of the movie "American Beauty" gives a metaphor to a kind of rose. It is a type of rose to represent beauty. Beauty is seen through one's point of view. The blond hair and blue eyes is Lester's concept of beauty. In reality beauty is everywhere. The film presents a deeper meaning to the word beauty. It seems like each character had a meaning with in them with a fantasy that needs to be realized.