There's so much beauty

Rating: 7/10 (20 January 2010)

1999's "American Beauty" centres around Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), who's an ordinary human being, which seems to be functioning not to live. "There's anything worse than being ordinary", is what Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) signalizes. But Lester is ordinary. He carries on a profession, which implies responsibility. His wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is an unsuccessful real estate agent not being in love anymore. His daughter Jane (Thora Birch) has to fight with usual teenage problems: She does not like her look including her breasts, her parents annoy her and nobody understands her. Everything appears ordinary. Reminding of every man's midlife crisis, Lester falls violently in love with Angela, who approximately is 20 years younger. This causes an one-eighty in Lester's thoughts. He wants to be young, to be free of sorrows, to enjoy his life again. He quits his job in order to get a job with the "least amount of responsibility", he sells his car to buy a muscle car and after having met Ricky Fits (Wes Bentley), a drug dealer in his neighbourhood, he even smokes pot. He principally shows how to escape from this adult world. This is even intensified by Ricky, who even sees beauty in plastic bags, which reminds of Reamonn's song "Through the eyes of a child". This filial point of view makes you think of your own live, your own perception, of the way you look at things yourself. I'd even go so far as to say that "American Beauty", with its undisputed beauty, is able to change the way you perceive your own surroundings. It really makes you reflect your place in this world. This movie even would be able to help depressives. Am I joking? No, I'm not. Concentrating on the generated beauty even depressives would enjoy their lives for a moment. But this beauty is not transported completely, because Sam Mendes' concept of showing this ordinary live achieves deadly boredom. For example you are not able to spot differences between the houses in the Burnhams' neighbourhood. Another aspect is the fact that you might have seen rows of houses like them in 30 other movies before. It is definitely appropriate to allege Mendes that he wanted to destroy this beauty on purpose. If you don't know this film yet, watch it and plunge into a world free of sorrows, responsibility and beauty. But be careful! You need something to stand boredom as well.