On the surface, American Beauty is a simple film. Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a middle-aged man, lives with his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) and daughter Jane (Flora Birch) in a comfortable suburban existence. Lester hates his office job that makes less than what the high-achieving Carolyn earns as a real estate broker. Jane is going through a teenage phase of excessive eyeliner, baggy clothes and general disdain towards people save for her friend, the gorgeous and superficial cheerleader Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari). Lester becomes infatuated with Angela who encourages his advances, while Jane forges a relationship of sorts with new neighbour Ricky, whose father Col. Fitts (Chris Cooper) is a retired war veteran and his mother Barbara (Allison Janney) a mentally unstable
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The characters in American Beauty are on a quest. They desire meaning, they desire truth. The pursuit of material wealth has made them unhappy, unfulfilled shells of people, and so they resort to any means of escape possible. Whether it is Angela and Lester’s paedophilic relationship, or Carolyn and Buddy’s affair, or Jane and Ricky’s plan to run away together, or Col. Fitts’ attempt to mask his homosexual nature, they are united in the life they share within the American Dream. The aesthetics of the film reflect its realist nature, showing up the Suburban Prison perfectly through its picket fences, large manicured homes, trimmed rose bushes and intentionally stereotyped characters. American Beauty is a critique against consumerism as an effect of late capitalism. It succeeds, but only if you think about the characters on the second level – that is, below the stereotypes they are meant to play. Personally, I enjoyed the movie at the second level. It was refreshing, a film that dared to mock and question the seemingly perfect middle class. On a third level, however, it also suggests a return to the idealist days of patriarchal households with submissive women would be the
The characters in American Beauty are on a quest. They desire meaning, they desire truth. The pursuit of material wealth has made them unhappy, unfulfilled shells of people, and so they resort to any means of escape possible. Whether it is Angela and Lester’s paedophilic relationship, or Carolyn and Buddy’s affair, or Jane and Ricky’s plan to run away together, or Col. Fitts’ attempt to mask his homosexual nature, they are united in the life they share within the American Dream. The aesthetics of the film reflect its realist nature, showing up the Suburban Prison perfectly through its picket fences, large manicured homes, trimmed rose bushes and intentionally stereotyped characters. American Beauty is a critique against consumerism as an effect of late capitalism. It succeeds, but only if you think about the characters on the second level – that is, below the stereotypes they are meant to play. Personally, I enjoyed the movie at the second level. It was refreshing, a film that dared to mock and question the seemingly perfect middle class. On a third level, however, it also suggests a return to the idealist days of patriarchal households with submissive women would be the