American Beauty (film)

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American Beauty
Directed by Sam Mendes
Produced by Bruce Cohen
Dan Jinks
Written by Alan Ball
Starring Kevin Spacey
Annette Bening
Thora Birch
Wes Bentley
Mena Suvari
Chris Cooper
Peter Gallagher
Allison Janney
Music by Thomas Newman
Cinematography Conrad L. Hall
Editing by Tariq Anwar
Distributed by DreamWorks
Release date(s) United States September 8, 1999 (première)
United States October 1, 1999 (wide release)
United Kingdom February 4, 2000 (wide release)
Australia February 4, 2000 (wide release)
Running time 122 min.
Language English
Budget $15,000,000 (estimated)[1]
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

American Beauty is an acclaimed 1999 drama film that explores themes of love, freedom, beauty, self-liberation, existentialism, 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 were nominated for Oscars. In 1999 it won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Contents

[edit] Cast

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Lester Burnham (Spacey) is a 42-year-old advertising executive living in suburban Chicago whose family life has fallen into disrepair. His wife Carolyn (Bening) is an ambitious and pretentious realtor with little on her mind but success, his daughter Jane (Birch) is a typically apathetic teenager who resents her father for his lack of support and contemplates breast implants despite obviously not needing them, and Lester himself is a self-described loser going through a mid-life crisis.

However, Lester receives motivation for transforming himself in the form of Angela Hayes (Suvari), Jane's best friend and classmate. Angela, a beautiful, confident, and supposedly promiscuous cheerleader who aspires to be a model, captivates Lester the moment he sees her perform a school dance routine, and he develops an obvious crush on her, much to Jane's embarrassment. Angela, however, finds Lester "sweet" and later comments to Jane that if he began exercising, she would "totally fuck him," which Lester overhears, leading to his beginning an intensive workout regimen.

Meanwhile, a family consisting of the homophobic and austere Colonel Frank Fitts, USMC (Cooper), his emotionless and possibly depressed wife Barbara (Janney), and their introspective and curious son Ricky (Bentley) moves next door to the Burnhams. Jane begins to notice Ricky, who, unbeknownst to his father, raises money as a marijuana dealer, videotaping her through her bedroom window, which secretly flatters her.

Lester fantasizes about Angela: "I was hoping you'd give me a bath. I'm very, very dirty."
Enlarge
Lester fantasizes about Angela: "I was hoping you'd give me a bath. I'm very, very dirty."

In one eventful day, Carolyn begins an extramarital affair with a rival realtor and also decides to begin relieving her stress at a shooting range; Lester quits his job, blackmails his boss for an enormous severance package, and begins work anew at a fast food restaurant; and Jane and Ricky bond over camcorder footage of a plastic bag "dancing" in the wind, which Ricky considers the most beautiful thing he has ever recorded. During a heated argument over dinner, Lester finally asserts his dominance over Carolyn in the household.

On his last day alive, Lester calmly confronts his wife about her affair, causing its end; Carolyn listens to a self-help tape that convinces her to "refuse to be a victim." She angrily drives home with her gun with the intent to confront her husband, believing him to have ruined her life. Lester then calls Ricky to the house for marijuana, raising the suspicions of Col. Fitts, who becomes convinced that his son is gay and subsequently forces him to leave the house, for which Ricky is happy to oblige. When Ricky and Jane plan to leave for New York City, Angela, who is visiting, accuses both of being "freaks," to which Ricky retorts that she is ugly, ordinary, and knows it. Angela bursts into sobs on the stairs, and Lester, after being confronted by a broken Col. Fitts — who, it is revealed, is actually gay himself — comforts her.

However, Lester's attempt to seduce Angela derails when she reveals that she is, in fact, a virgin. He cannot bring himself to take her virginity and instead makes her a sandwich in the kitchen. For the first time in a while, Lester realizes that he is truly happy. As Angela heads to the bathroom, Lester contemplates an old photo of his smiling family - unaware of Col. Fitts's gun levelled at the back of his head.

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. Looking back on these events from his vantage point as narrator, Lester is only 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.
   
”

[edit] Themes

[edit] Roses

The American Beauty rose features prominently throughout the film:

  • Carolyn grows American Beauty roses in her garden and takes obsessive care of them. One of the Burnham's neighbors comments on how beautiful they are, and she proceeds to give him a description of her techniques for their growth.
  • Vases of cut American Beauty roses also decorate the Burnham home, especially on the dining room table. The bright red of their petals provides a stark contrast to the pale muted tones of the rooms they inhabit.
  • Lester's fantasies about Angela can be discerned from reality by the presence of American Beauty rose petals: emanating from her cheerleading sweater when she opens it, covering the surface of her bath water, surrounding her and covering her while she lies naked, and one which Lester pulls from his mouth after fantasizing about kissing her in the kitchen.
  • The "American Beauty" rose is a variety of rose bred artificially for its perfect appearance; it has no scent. In the film it represents "fake beauty", beauty that is only skin deep.

Carolyn is also wearing a button-down sweater with a printed rose pattern during the scene in which Lester smashes the plate of asparagus, and in the next scene in which she slaps Jane.

[edit] Homosexuality

The Burnhams have openly homosexual neighbors: Jim the tax attorney, and Jim the anesthesiologist. They advise Lester on how to 'look good naked' after he joins their daily run and asks for their help.

Colonel Fitts espouses vitriolic homophobic sentiments throughout the film, eventually informing Ricky that he would 'rather you were dead than be a fucking faggot'. The Colonel later approaches Lester while Lester is working out in the garage, kissing him and admitting his own repressed homosexuality.

[edit] Honesty to Oneself

Repression of one's real wants/needs/desires and creating a superficial exterior to hide one's insecurities is one of the film's strongest motifs:

  • Lester, during his narration, claims to be dead inside long before his physical death. He begins to enter a mid-life crisis, slowly exercising some of his real personality and feelings in his life, and finds that he likes being able to express himself again after yielding to Carolyn's personality for so long.
  • Carolyn yearns for success and the image thereof, so much that she refuses to acknowledge that she and her husband are having a fundamental disconnect in their marriage. Her image of perfection is so ingrained that she cannot accept the changes Lester wishes to make in his life and in their lives together. She eventually has an affair with a more successful real estate broker, obtains a gun, and acquires self-help tapes, unwilling to admit until Lester's death that her life is unraveling before her eyes.
  • Jane's transformation through the film is subtle, but noticeable. She has a cheerful, colorful room, wears makeup and is a member of the cheerleading squad at her high school, as well as being friends with Angela, a supposedly more beautiful and popular cheerleader. After meeting Ricky Fitts, Jane slowly begins to move away from the 'normal': she wears less and less makeup, challenges Angela's behavior and attitudes, and embraces that which makes her different from others.
  • Frank Fitts is a staunch Marine Colonel whose militant attitude and insistance upon discipline and order in his house even includes having his son's urine tested. He has been repressing his homosexuality for many years, denying what he deems to be unnatural about himself, and, after Lester spurns him, he kills the man who rejected his eventual acceptance of those feelings in frustration.
  • Barbara Fitts, for reasons unknown throughout the film, seems to have withdrawn from reality. Whether through the abuse/repression of her husband, a traumatic event from her own past, or the side-effect of some form of medication, Barbara's personality appears to have been almost wholly suppressed. She looks lost and uncertain in all scenes in which she appears.
  • Ricky Fitts is forced to hide his artistic nature as well as his marijuana dealing due to his father's militaristic rule over the Fitts home. He connects to Jane initially by filming her, learning her name from Lester, and has a tender, shy nature until the end of the film. When Angela confronts Jane about leaving with him, Ricky shows his more forceful nature and defends the girl he loves.
  • Angela Hayes, like Carolyn, has adopted a self-confident, haughty and promiscuous exterior to hide her own insecurities. She lies blatantly to fellow students about sleeping with fashion photographers, brags to Jane that men have been ogling her since the age of twelve, and acts the coquette towards Lester, whose attraction to her is obvious. Her sexpot image derails when she admits to Lester that she is a virgin after being told by Ricky that she is 'ordinary', which to her is the worst thing in the world to be. She is wiping the smeared makeup from her face in the bathroom when Lester is killed, which can be viewed as removing the mask she has been wearing all along.

[edit] Beauty

  • Beauty can be found in all corners of the world if one just knows how to look for it. As Angela says, "There is nothing worse than being ordinary." Angela thought she was "ordinary," yet Lester thought she was anything but. Lester, in turn, thought he was a "loser," yet Angela found him "sexy," Jane hated the way she looked and thought herself "boring." Ricky, however, was ceaselessly fascinated by her.

Therefore, as Lester says in his narrative, that even an ordinary paper bag blowing in the breeze has a certain amount of beauty to it - it just depends on how you look at it. Hence all the characters of the film were "Beautiful" in some way, even though they themselves may not have been aware of it.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Changes

  • Alan Ball originally wrote American Beauty for the stage.
  • In what Entertainment Weekly characterized as a "radical postproduction jigger" and a "bold move" that paid off,[2] director Mendes eliminated the film's original opening and ending. It originally began and ended with scenes depicting Ricky and Jane in jail, accused of Lester's murder, and also featured scenes of Lester-as-narrator flying down to visit his neighborhood.
  • In the original version of the script, there was a separate story that included Col. Fitts having a gay lover who died in Vietnam. It also included a scene in which Lester and Angela had sex.

[edit] Soundtrack and score

Main article: American Beauty (soundtrack)

The score to American Beauty was composed by Thomas Newman. The soundtrack to the film also features songs by popular artists such as The Who, Free and The Folk Implosion as well as a cover version of The Beatles song "Because" performed by Elliott Smith.

[edit] 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 Weinraub penned an enthusiastic column about the film and described 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 the DreamWorks studio, as the details of how and when the movie would be released were being debated; it also reported that Steven Spielberg (a co-founder of DreamWorks) 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.[3][4]

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 critics 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.[5]

On 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 its 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.[1]

[edit] 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.

[edit] Wins

[edit] 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

[edit] Trivia

In order to meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article's trivia section requires cleanup.
Content in the trivia section should be integrated into other appropriate areas of the article.
  • The bartender at the restaurant where Ricky works is played by producer Bruce Cohen.
  • Many of the school scenes were shot at South High School, in Torrance, CA, and most of the extras in the gym crowd were South High students.
  • Paula Abdul is credited as choreographer for the movie; presumably, she was hired to arrange the cheerleading scene.
  • 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.
  • The film’s tagline found on the DVD cover, "Look Closer," can be seen on a card or bumper sticker on Lester's desk in the beginning of the movie. The production designer had stuck it there at random, and it was picked up for use as the tagline, according to 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.
  • While the hand that opens the door at the end of the movie - when Ricky and Jane first find Lester - is assumed to belong to the actor Wes Bentley, it is actually the hand of director Sam Mendes.
  • 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."
    • The content of the motivational tape Carolyn recites at the end of the film derives from Keith Raniere's Executive Success group (and suspected cult).[citation needed]
  • 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.[6]
  • The hand and stomach on the film's poster, a reference to a scene featuring Mena Suvari, are actually those of actress/model Chloe Hunter.
  • During the movie's second dinner scene, Spacey was only supposed to throw the plate of asparagus onto the floor. However, while shooting, Spacey decided to pitch it at the wall. Birch and Bening's surprise reactions are genuine.
  • While Lester and Carolyn are driving to the basketball game, Lester complains that he is missing the James Bond marathon on T.N.T. (Turner Network Television). T.N.T. has recently begun airing American Beauty as one of its 'New Classics'.

[edit] In popular culture

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!
  • In the 2005 animated film Madagascar, the lion character Alex goes through a hallucination sequence in which various slabs of meat fly at him because he has not eaten for days. The sequence uses the exact same music that is used in American Beauty when Lester imagines rose petals flying from Angela's shirt.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Business data for American Beauty from IMDb
  2. ^ Daly, S. "Beauty Secrets", Entertainment Weekly, October 8, 1999
  3. ^ Sragow, Michael. "American BJ", Salon.com, 2000-03-30. Retrieved on 2006-07-16. (in English)
  4. ^ Weinraub, Bernard. "At the Movies", The New York Times, 1999-07-02. Retrieved on 2006-07-05. (in English)
  5. ^ Hoberman, J.. "Boomer Bust", The Village Voice. Retrieved on 2006-07-05. (in English)
  6. ^ Statement made during Alan Ball's Oscar acceptance speech

[edit] External links

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Academy Award for Best Picture: Winners (1981–2000)

1981: Chariots of Fire | 1982: Gandhi | 1983: Terms of Endearment | 1984: Amadeus | 1985: Out of Africa | 1986: Platoon | 1987: The Last Emperor | 1988: Rain Man | 1989: Driving Miss Daisy | 1990: Dances with Wolves | 1991: The Silence of the Lambs | 1992: Unforgiven | 1993: Schindler's List | 1994: Forrest Gump | 1995: Braveheart | 1996: The English Patient | 1997: Titanic | 1998: Shakespeare in Love | 1999: American Beauty | 2000: Gladiator
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