Great Film !

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2010)

The film American Beauty is a film that sets a great example of how people will sacrifice their happiness just to live up to the picture perfect successful life that society has painted. In this film Lester (Kevin Spacey is very unhappy with his marriage and his job. He is constantly disrespected by his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) and his daughter Jane (Thora Birch). He works for a company that he hates and longs for the day that he has the nerve to just walk out. Carolyn is a success driven real estate agent who is in constant competition with the self proclaimed "King of Real Estate" Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher). This causes her to neglect her husband and her daughter and lose all morals for their relationships. Jane is ashamed of what her mother and father have become and wants nothing to do with them, she finds herself feeling alone in the world with no parental guidance.
Lester and Carolyn decide to attend one of Jane's school basketball games, where she is a cheerleader, and Lester finds himself daydreaming about one of the girls on the cheerleading squad who just so happens to be one of his daughters good friends. Later in the film this same girl tries to seduce Lester and this sets him on the road to redemption. Carolyn attends an event with Lester where she runs into Buddy and they decide to have lunch so that he can teach her some of his tricks in the real estate business. This lunch later turns into Carolyn and Buddy having an affair and them later getting caught by Lester. This just adds fuel to Lester's fire in his journey of becoming this man who really doesn't care what the world or his wife thinks. Jane starts dating the neighbor/schoolmate Ricky who everyone thinks is weird and psycho. Ricky's dad the Colonel, who is a retired marine, thinks that Ricky is sleeping with Lester.
The music in this film adds so much to the characters and what they are feeling. For example, there is a scene where Lester is riding down the street in his car smoking weed and he has American Woman by Lenny Kravitz playing on the radio which is a very free spirited and care free song. I thought that this song went perfectly with the way that Lester had been currently acting. The lighting in this film also played a big part in enhancing the moods of the characters to the viewers. There were scenes in the film where the mood was relaxed and mellow, during this time the lighting was very dim and subtle, giving you a sense of calm and relaxation. Mainly throughout the film there was natural lighting used, for example when Carolyn and Lester were both in their cars driving down the street there seemed to only natural sun light being used in both of those scenes.
Overall the director (Sam Mendes), writer (Alan Ball) and the rest of their crew did a great job when putting this film together. I enjoyed how each actor brought the characters to life just by doing little things like facial expressions, and body language. There weren't any dead parts of the film; it kept you interested from the beginning to the end. I am looking forward to enjoying more films by Mendes and Ball.