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American Beauty (1999 film)

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American Beauty
File:American-beauty-mov-poster.jpg
Directed bySam Mendes
Written byAlan Ball
Produced byBruce Cohen
Dan Jinks
StarringKevin Spacey
Annette Bening
Thora Birch
Wes Bentley
Mena Suvari
Chris Cooper
Peter Gallagher
Allison Janney
Music byThomas Newman
Distributed byDreamWorks
Release dates
September 8, 1999[1]
Running time
122 min.
LanguageEnglish
Budget$15,000,000 (estimated)[2]

American Beauty is a 1999 drama film that explores themes of love, freedom, self-liberation, the search for happiness, and family against the backdrop of modern American suburbia. The film was the screen debut for writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes and starred Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening; all four of them were nominated for Oscars. In 1999 it won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Cast

Plot

Template:Spoiler

The movie opens with scratchy camcorder footage of a teen girl reclining on a bed, complaining about her father, who is boring, socially awkward, and a general embarrassment. A young man off-camera, presumably the camcorder operator, asks in a somewhat offhand way, "You want me to kill him for you?" She thinks for a moment, and then says with a smirk, "Yeah. Would you?"

The movie then begins again with Lester Burnham (Spacey), a 42-year-old father and advertising executive. His self-narration, however, comes from somewhere else than here: "In less than a year," he says to the audience, "I'll be dead. Of course, I don't know that yet. And in a way, I'm dead already." It soon becomes clear why: his family life is a mess. His wife Carolyn (Bening) is an ambitious, pretentious realtor with little on her mind but success: "My company sells an image. It's part of my job to live that image." His 16-year-old daughter Jane (Birch), the subject of the opening camcorder footage, is contemplating breast implants. "Janie's a pretty typical teenager," Lester says, "Angry, insecure, confused. I wish I could tell her that's all going to pass, but I don't want to lie to her." They haven't spoken to each other for months. Lester himself is a self-described loser: boring, faceless and easy to forget. "I have lost something. ... But you know what? It's never too late to get it back."

Lester, his wife, and his daughter's typical life up to that point is outlined within a day (whose high point he describes to be masturbating in the shower); He goes to his job where his boss asks him to write his job description, part of an effort to find out who is expendable so that that person can be fired. Carolyn attempts to sell a house to various couples while meeting rejection after rejection. Jane spends her days outside school with a superficial best friend, Angela Hayes (Suvari), with feelings of insecurity. At the dinner table the somber mood is apparent with the "elevator music" courtesy of Carolyn, the strained communications, the moodiness of Jane, Lester's disregarded dilemma he tries to discuss, and Carolyn's dominance over things.

Lester's impetus for transforming himself from loser to winner is the best friend and classmate of Jane's: Angela, a beautiful and confident girl who feels "there's nothing worse in life than being ordinary" and has aspirations of becoming a model. Lester meets her when he and Carolyn come to a basketball game to watch their daughter cheerlead; he immediately develops an obvious infatuation on her, much to Jane's embarrassment. That night, Jane finds someone videotaping her with a camcorder—a fact that secretly flatters her. When Jane has Angela stay for a sleepover, Lester overhears Angela saying she'd "totally fuck him" if he worked out, and immediately starts doing so.

File:WesThoraMena.jpg
Bentley, Birch and Suvari in a promotional photo Template:Unverifiedimage

The next morning we are introduced to the family that has just bought the vacant house next door to the Burnham family: Col. Frank Fitts, USMC (Cooper), his wife Barbara (Janney) and son Ricky (Bentley). When confronted by the openly gay couple two houses over (Jim Olmeyer and Jim Berkley, Bakula and Robards respectively), Fitts shows a distinctly bigoted attitude. Barbara spends entire days silently zoned out, and Ricky is making far more money than a high-schooler should. Ricky is revealed to be the person with the camcorder, and when he gets to school he approaches Jane and Angela with almost eerie confidence. "I'm not obsessing," he says to Jane (more or less, ignorning Angela), "I'm just curious."

Meanwhile, at a party for realtors, Carolyn, reluctantly accompanied by Lester, finds herself being swept away by charismatic and highly successful fellow realtor Buddy Kane (Gallagher). Lester meets Ricky, whose work as a caterer is a mask for his successful career as a marijuana dealer. Lester becomes one of his clients.

All these plotlines come to a head on one climactic day:

  • Carolyn meets Buddy for lunch and ends up having loud sex with him in a motel;
  • Lester quits his job, blackmails his boss for a full year's salary (including full benefits) as a severance package, and takes up employment as a burger-flipper at a fast food chain; and
  • Jane and Ricky bond over his father's war paraphernalia, and then one of his camcorder movies of what he considers his most beautiful footage, that of a plastic grocery bag dancing in the wind. "Sometimes," he explains, "there's so much beauty in the world."

Over dinner that evening Lester stands up to his wife for the first time, and begins to break her deadlock control over the house. When Carolyn's tearful apology to Jane turns into a fight, Jane opens the curtains of her window to see Ricky in his room with his camcorder. In a moment of deliberate vulnerability, she reveals her breasts to him, but the moment is shattered when Col. Fitts smashes into Ricky's room and beats him for going into his office, thinking Ricky was looking for drug money. When Ricky says he was bringing his girlfriend in, though, Fitts relents, and the day closes with Ricky dabbing at his face in the mirror, the camcorder (hooked up directly to the widescreen television) showing a sideways room.

File:AMBeauty2.jpg
Lester fantasizes about Angela: "I was hoping you'd give me a bath. I'm very, very dirty." Template:Unverifiedimage

Lester continues to liberate himself from failure. He trades in his Toyota Camry for a 1970 Pontiac Firebird ("The car I've always wanted, and now I have it. I rule!"), and continues to work out and smoke marijuana. He describes his philosophy to Carolyn: "This isn't life, it's just stuff. And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts." Carolyn is having none of it. She, for her part, is visiting a firing range on a regular basis: Buddy's idea, and a truly empowering thing for Carolyn; just before coming face-to-face with the Firebird she is singing and grooving in her car, clearly happier than she's been in ages. Finally, Ricky and Jane commune in his bedroom, a confessional that leads to the video camera footage seen at the beginning of the film. Unfortunately, Ricky turns off the camera before she can remind him that she was just joking.

The next scene opens with Lester's narration: "Remember those posters that said, 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life?' Well, that's true of every day except one: the day you die." Jane invites Angela over for a sleepover, but not before confronting Lester about his embarrassing behavior. Ricky rides to school with Jane and her mother, and Lester gestures, "Call me"—which Col. Fitts catches; confused, he roots through his son's possessions, but instead of finding the marijuana or the video of Jane's "confession," he finds one of Lester working out naked ("Welcome to America's Weirdest Home Videos," Ricky narrates). Buddy and Carolyn, midway through a tryst, happen to stop at a Mr. Smiley's, where Lester pre-empts the drive-through worker for a pleasant conversation with his wife; afterwards, Buddy decides that maybe they should let things cool down (though Lester seems blase about it). Carolyn has now lost everything and has a breakdown, screaming her despair as thunder crackles overhead.

Lester's out of something too: weed. He pages Ricky, who hurries over with a refill; they pause to smoke together, while Col. Fitts watches. Due to some deceptive perspective work, however, it looks to him like Ricky and Lester are doing something else, especially when they break it up in a panic when Jane and Angela arrive. Lester turns on the charm for Angela, but is confused when she backs down nervously. Ricky, returning home, finds his father waiting for him with fists and vitriol—"I will not sit back and watch my only son become a cocksucker!!"—and threatens to throw him out of the house. This is exactly what Ricky wants, and he pretends to "come out of the closet" to escape. Then he rushes back to Jane's house, and the two make plans to leave for New York City. When Angela tells Jane not to, Ricky shoots her down with the claim that she is ugly and ordinary, and that she knows it. Angela storms of the bedroom and breaks into sobs on the stairs.

Lester, working out in the garage, sees a man standing outside in the pouring rain. It's Col. Fitts, soaked and broken. Lester attempts to comfort him, but is taken totally by surprise when Fitts kisses him: "Whoa. I'm sorry. You got the wrong idea." Fitts, shamed as well as broken, wanders back out into the rain. Meanwhile, Carolyn, alone in her car in the rain, listens to a self-help tape urging her to take responsibility for her problems and their solutions. She grabs her gun from her glove department and begins repeating the words spoken on the tape.

Finally, Lester finds Angela playing the stereo, trying to reassemble her life. She is reassured when he tells her he doesn't think she's ordinary at all, but the seduction derails when she confesses that it's her first time. Lester can't do it. He makes her a sandwich and they bond over the kitchen counter, talking about Jane ("She thinks she's in love," Angela scoffs). She asks him how he's feeling, the "first time someone has asked [him] that in a long time," and he realizes, to his surprise, that he feels great. Angela goes to the bathroom, leaving him alone to contemplate a picture of his smiling family... Unaware of the gun poking into the shot behind him, Lester contemplates the changes he has made in his life, and reflects this only through his last words (with a smile): "Man oh man. Man oh man oh man."

The movie ends with Lester's description of his life flashing before his eyes, interspersed with scenes of his family and others at the moment of the gunshot: Jane and Ricky, steeling themselves for their journey; Angela, bustling in the bathroom; Carolyn, a rain-drenched avenging angel descending on the front door. Col. Fitts, in his office, strips off his latex gloves and bloody T-shirt; behind him, one of the guns is missing from his rack. Carolyn throws her purse and its firearm into a hamper in the closet, and collapses, sobbing, into a pile of Lester's shirts. But Lester himself, looking back on these events from his vantage point as narrator, is content:

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much; my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain, and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.

You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... You will someday.

Template:Endspoiler

Reception

Critical reaction to American Beauty was overwhelmingly positive, beginning as early as three months in advance of the film's opening, when New York Times reviewer Bernard Weinraubran penned an enthusiastic column about the film, describing it as "the most talked about film of the moment". The column, which ran on the weekend of July 4, gave few specifics regarding the film itself, but noted that the film was generating "tremendous buzz" within Dreamworks' studio, as the details of how and when the movie would be released were being debated; it also reported that Steven Spielberg called the film one of the best he'd seen in years, and that Bening was moved to tears at an early screening of the film.

The movie premiered on September 8th, 1999 in Los Angeles California to reviews that generally reaffirmed the advance hype, uniformly praising the cast, script, and cinematography, as well as the first-time direction by Mendes. Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Guthman called it "a dazzling tale of loneliness, desire and the hollowness of conformity". Jay Carr for the Boston Globe called the film "a millenial classic"; the New York Post called it "a flat-out masterpiece". Among the smaller number of critic who expressed negative opinions of the film were J. Hoberman of the Village Voice and Wesley Morris of the San Francisco Examiner, both of whom were critical of the film's script and direction, if not its performances.

September 11, it was shown at the Toronto film festival, where it won the People's Choice award just days before its opening. Aided tremendously by the positive press, the film took in $861,531 on it's opening weekend in the United States, despite a limited release to only 16 screens. By October, the film was released to a wider audience, and quickly surpassed the film's estimated $15,000,000 production budget. Ultimately, the film would gross $356,296,601 internationally.

Themes

American dream

American Beauty focuses on existentialist themes surrounding the disillusioned American dream by examining the materialistic nature of those who pursue that dream and the emptiness of relationships. American Beauty also examines the nature of true beauty.

When Lester says "I want a job with the least amount of responsibility", while applying for a counter job at a burger joint, he epitomizes a person who is thoroughly frustrated with being a corporate slave stuck working in a cubicle surrounded by superficial people he despises and sees the job at Mr. Smiley's as the first step to getting back to the Lester of his younger days when all he did was "party and get laid", which was coincidentally the happiest time of his life.

American Beauty establishes that Lester and Carolyn have worked to build a very comfortable life for themselves and for Jane. The film examines how, while Lester and Carolyn were busy building a comfortable life for themselves, they became unknowingly materialistic and overtly focused on success, illustrated in a scene where Carolyn and Lester are about to kiss and Carolyn ruins it by exclaiming “Lester, you’re going to spill beer on the couch!”. Template:Spoiler There are few moments in which Carolyn breaks down such as one where she closes the doors and drapes of a house she was unable to sell, despite the best of her efforts and "motivation" from tapes and books, and breaks into a convulsive fit of sobbing. Then she immediately "corrects" her behavior, by reprimanding and slapping herself and then walks away with false confidence. Another similar scene involving Carolyn occurs at the near end of the movie, when she opens the closet containing her dead husband's clothes, grabs at them and falls past them amidst intense crying. Template:Endspoiler

Aesthetics

American Beauty explores the nature of true beauty and ugliness, simultaneously teaching both the characters and the audience that beauty can be discovered in every aspect of life. Two major themes promote this end: Ricky's comments during his videotaping, and the symbolism of the rose. Throughout the movie, Ricky claims that things that revolve around death or suffering are beautiful, such as a homeless person freezing to death on the street, a dead bird, and a funeral procession. According to Ricky, the most beautiful thing he ever taped was a plastic bag floating by itself in the wind; beauty doesn't have to orchestrated and complex - it can be simple.

The rose symbolism is more subtle, but also very important. It begins with the name of the film, which is actually a reference to a certain type of Hybrid Perpetual red rose, similar to the Ulrich Brunner fils. Throughout the movie, roses represent the beauty of love, in all its different forms, from dead, forgotten love to illicit passion.

Adultery

Carolyn begins an affair with the local real-estate giant Buddy Kane, which begins as envy arising out of frustration at not being able to compete with him, then transforms to admiration and finally into submission to his might. Carolyn's character stands as a textbook example for a person who confuses happiness with success. In fact, she is so misguided that she listens to the prattle of Buddy regarding success, with utmost engrossment almost as if she were in a state of trance. They believe that one can never overdo regarding one's "drive to success."

Passive aggression

The movie is pattered with interesting dialogues, especially those involving Lester. For example, when the real-estate giant fails to recognize him at a party, but puts up a face as if he does, Lester quips "Oh, don't worry, I wouldn't remember me either". Likewise, when his wife asks him sarcastically if he should have consulted her before trading in his car for a sportscar, Lester replies "Okay, let me see," and then after a pause, adds "No, you never drove it." One can't help but be sorry, while at the same time laugh at Lester's antics.

Homosexuality

Template:Spoiler The behavior of Colonel Fitts traces that of a Latent closeted, self-loathing gay man, who is frightened that someone might think he's gay and exhibits reaction formation in an extra effort to distance himself from gay people, displays overt hostility to homosexuals, projecting the image of a homophobic person. His behavior also integrates his military career as in his quest for keeping complete discipline in his family; he eventually neglects any sense of emotion and closeness with the people around him. His constant preaching about "structure and discipline" has eroded any sense of compassion a family has. An example is when he takes his son's urine sample; he seems ready to say something, then stops short and leaves. What could have been a heart-to-heart moment is diminished by his rigorous sense of structure.

The movie also projects a mixed image regarding the acceptance and prevalence of gay people in the American society with the murderous closeted Colonel Fitts and the ubiquitous, beamish and friendly gay couple Jim & Jim. Template:Endspoiler

Influences

In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, a man by the name of Humbert lusts after a younger girl; the same plot features in American Beauty. Two films have been made from the book Lolita, by Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne respectively. Lester Burnham is an anagram of "Humbert learns", a reference that may be deliberate. Furthermore, the family name of Nabokov's Lolita, Haze, is homophonous with Angela's last name, Hayes.

Another literary work with thematic similarities to the film is the play Death of a Salesman, which deals with themes of alienation and the American Dream. Furthermore, early in the movie, Carolyn mentions that the "Lomans" (the name of the central family in "Death of a Salesman") have recently moved from the house next door. Members of the production described the film as “a modern-day ‘Death of a Salesman’.

The writer of the movie, Alan Ball, is openly gay and frequently uses gay themes in his works. He is also the creator of the critically acclaimed and highly popular show on HBO, Six Feet Under.

Similarities can also be drawn between the character of Martha, in the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, written by another openly gay writer Edward Albee and Carolyn Burnham (though it is rumored that Ball based Carolyn's character on the impossible Cybill Shepherd, who acted in one of Alan's television shows, Cybill). Template:Spoiler "The Country Husband", a short story by John Cheever can also be directly related to American Beauty, through a comparison of Lester Burnham with Francis Weed. Much like Lester, Francis Weed is sick of the suburban nightmare and his superficial wife Julia who is, like Carolyn, obsessed with image and success. Francis develops a crush on Ann Murchison, his children's babysitter and daydreams of stealing her away to Paris to live happily ever after. Although Francis is never shot by his closeted gay neighbor, he seeks psychiatric help and is sentenced to carpentry in his basement to escape the rest of his life. Template:Endspoiler

Awards

The movie dominated the 1999 Oscars, with a total of eight nominations. It also had another 82 wins and 63 nominations at numerous other award ceremonies.

Wins

Nominations

  • Academy Award for Best Actress (Annette Bening)
  • Academy Award for Original Music Score (Thomas Newman)
  • Academy Award for Film Editing (Tariq Anwar)
  • American Cinema Editors, USA: Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film - Dramatic* American Comedy Awards, USA: American Comedy Award for Funniest Motion Picture, Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role)
  • Art Directors Guild: Excellence in Production Design Award for Feature Film
  • Awards of the Japanese Academy: Award of the Japanese Academy for Best Foreign Film
  • BAFTA Award for Best Direction (David Lean Award for Direction) (Sam Mendes)
  • BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay - Original (Alan Ball)
  • BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Wes Bentley)
  • BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Thora Birch)
  • BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Mena Suvari)
  • BAFTA Award for Best Sound
  • BAFTA Award for Best Production Design
  • BAFTA Award for Best Make Up/Hair
  • Blockbuster Entertainment Awards: Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Actress - Drama, Favorite Supporting Actor- Drama, Favorite Supporting Actress - Drama, Favorite Actor - Drama, Favorite Actress - Newcomer (Internet Only)
  • Brit Awards: Brit for Best Soundtrack
  • Chicago Film Critics Association Awards: CFCA Award for Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Actress
  • Cinema Audio Society, USA: C.A.S. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Feature Film

Trivia

  • Earlier versions of the movie were bookended by scenes of Jane and Ricky in jail for Lester's murder.
  • On the DVD, Sam Mendes says that he gave Steven Spielberg a private screening of the movie, which drove him to tears upon finishing it.
  • Chevy Chase was originally cast as Lester Burnham but pulled out.
  • The film’s tagline found on the DVD cover, "Look Closer," can be seen on a card or sticker at Lester's desk in the beginning of the movie. The production designer had put it there and they then decided to use it as the tagline, according to director Sam Mendes.
  • While the hand that opens the door at the end of the movie when Ricky and Jane first find Lester is assumed to be Wes Bentley, who plays Ricky, it is actually the hand of director Sam Mendes.
  • Sam Mendes designed the two girls' appearances to change over the course of the film, with Thora Birch gradually using less makeup and Mena Suvari gradually using more, to emphasize his view of their shifting perceptions of themselves.
  • In the original version of the script, there was a separate story that included Col. Fitts having a gay lover who died in Vietnam.
  • American Beauty is also a breed of roses, which Carolyn grows in her garden and takes obsessive care of. The roses can be seen recurring throughout the movie at various places, such as on the dining table at Burnhams. They also occur in the highly colorful and exhaustively illustrated fantasies of Lester regarding Angela.
  • The bartender at the restaurant where Ricky works is producer Bruce Cohen.
  • In what Entertainment Weekly characterized as a "radical postproduction jigger" and a "bold move" that paid off[3], director Mendes eliminated the film's original opening and ending. It originally began with a scene in which Lester, wearing a bathrobe, flies down to visit his neighborhood. The last five minutes of the original film featured a scene where Lester's neighbor Ricky was framed and jailed for a murder.
  • Alan Ball originally wrote this as a play and included a scene in which Lester and Angela had sex.
  • The brief topless scene of Thora Birch was shot in the presence of her parents and child labor representatives, since she was barely seventeen at that time
  • The self-help tapes that Carolyn listens to are made by a certain "Dr. Alan Ball".
  • Alan Ball was sitting at the World Trade Center plaza when he saw a paper bag floating in the wind and was inspired by it to write the film[4].
  • The hand and stomach on the film's poster, a reference to a scene featuring Mena Suvari, are those of actress/model Chloe Hunter.
  • During the scene involving intense exchange of words between Spacey and Bening at dinner, Spacey was supposed to only throw a plate onto the floor but while shooting, Spacey actually threw the plate onto the wall breaking a painting on the wall, much to the surprise of the people on the set.
  • Rise Against's song "Last Chance Blueprint" begins with this clip from American Beauty:
Angela Hayes: Jane, he's a freak!
Jane Burnham: Then so am I! And we'll always be freaks and we'll never be like other people and you'll never be a freak because you're just too... perfect!

References

  1. ^ Release dates for American Beauty from IMDb
  2. ^ Business data for American Beauty from IMDb
  3. ^ Daly, S. "Beauty Secrets", Entertainment Weekly, October 8, 1999
  4. ^ Statement made during Alan Ball's Oscar acceptance speech
Wikiquote has quotations related to American Beauty.


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