Movies

American Beauty, the 1999 film starring Kevin Spacey, tells the story of Lester Burnham, a seemingly ordinary,  middle-aged, suburban man and his family.  On the surface, it is the story of a husband and father who undergoes a sort of mid-life crisis.  Lester is unhappy with the drudgery and misery of his boring office job.  And, he is also very unhappy in his home life.  He has a strained relationship with his teenaged daughter, Jane, and his relationship with his wife, Carolyn, a materialistic real estate broker has become stale and lifeless after years of marriage.   Lester loses his job and becomes sexually obsessed with one of his daughters schoolmates, setting into motion a series of events which ultimately lead to his death.  However, American Beauty isnt just about Lester and his family.  The movie is making a larger statement about American life, pointing out both the good aspects and the aspects which are not so appealing.

There are many complex themes in the film, but one which really stands out is the idea that there is a very different reality that lies beneath what we sometimes see.  In the film, there is a very memorable moment when Rickey, a next door neighbor and schoolmate of Janes, talks about why he filmed footage of an ordinary plastic bag being tossed about in the wind.  He says he filmed the bag because he realized there is an entire life behind things, and found that to be beautiful. The idea that Rickey finds this plastic thing so beautiful parallels what the viewer is meant to see in the film.  The suburban lives the Burnhams lead is also very superficial and plastic, in a sense.  It is full of perfectly manicured lawns and the appearance of a happy American families.  But, behind the faade, a much pristine reality exists. Draw back the curtains on their perfect existence, and the Burnhams are really a mess. Their relationships are dysfunctional and they are each, in their own way, deeply troubled.

The Burnhams are not the only ones in the movie who are not what they seem.  Almost every single character is revealed as a sort of fraud, not in a bad sense, but more in the sense that they protect their vulnerable true identity with a social mask, in order to avoid being hurt.  Rickeys father Frank, for example, is not what he seems. On the outside, he is a homophobic, heterosexual Marine Corp Colonel, but he is actually hiding deep seeded homosexual inclinations that he is unable to accept.  Rickey, himself, puts on a pretense for his father.  He plays the role of the dutiful son he thinks his father wants him to be. He pretends he works at a catering service when in reality he is making money selling marijuana.  Also, Janes friend, Angela, pretends to be a super confident and sexually active blonde cheerleader type.  However, it is revealed that, for all her supposed sexual bravado, she is actually a very inexperienced young virgin, scared to let the world see that she is still a frightened little girl in a lot of ways.

Time and again, throughout American Beauty, the characters hide behind the masks of their daily lives. From the other phony real estate agents Carolyn works with, to the pretentious co-workers at Lesters office, everybody is playing a part.  The gay male couple, another of the Burnhams suburban neighbors, are probably the only two characters who come close to being honest about who they really are.  Overall,  American Beauty seems to be saying that we must look beyond the first impression of what we see, if we truly want to see the beauty in most human beings because most of us spend so much time pretending to be something or someone we are not.