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Rating: 10/10 (10 February 2006)

'American beauty', a masterpiece of a movie, winner of five academy awards 1999, brilliant writing and fantastic directing. The nature of the human behavior with dreams and reality is very realistic and the acting is so precise that it seems very real.
'American Beauty' is about Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) who is at the break of a mid life crisis. He lives in the perfect town and has your average family but if you ask him it's all a fake. The characters in the neighborhood are very different, there is Lester Burnham the man going through a mid life crisis, Carolyn Burnham who is Lester Burham's wife but she acts very plastic and she try's to keep the family together but when she doesn't succeed she sleeps with another man, then there is Jane Burnham the troubled teenager who ends up falling in love with the boy next door. After the family we come to the family next door, first there is Ricky Fits the son who was once in a mental institution but now has an obsession with filming the Burnham family (they don't know that their being filmed), he is different from everyone else because he looks closer to life, then there is Ricky's dad Col. Frank Fits who is a Gulf War veteran, he is obsessed with strict army rules and hates gays and drugs. We then come to Angela Haves, she is someone who claims to always having sex with rich people, she is also depressed but she hides it, from the moment Lester Burnham sees her he falls in love with her, mainly because of her youth.
There is only one other time that I've said this but 'American Beauty' is more of a Hollywood work of art (the other time was with 'The Shawshank Redemption'), it has a beauty yet such a realistic nature to it which adds to the fantastic work of art.
Something that the audience may not have known was that when Lester became obsessed with Angela, he wasn't actually obsessed with Angela as such, Angela to him represented youth, he became obsessed with youth. That was also a very realistic aspect because it was a way to get through to you the obsession with youth that may occur to some people in their forty's. Carolyn Burnham is not suffering from a mid life crisis so she doesn't understand but she acts very cheerful and happy in front of guests but is really very depressed so instead of making out that she's loving Lester she decide's to have sex with a happier and richer man, which Lester doesn't care about, he just says that his marriage is for show.
'American Beauty' is a film of real beauty, the acting is fantastic from all of the actors and actress's, the directer has made a very fake happiness yet very realistic landscape ant atmosphere and the writer has written a script that is very well written and is very different from your usual script. The characters are very well created and very different to each other. 'American Beauty' is one of the best and most touching movies ever, if you haven't seen then it's a must watch.
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