FREE ESSAY ON AMERICAN BEAUTY

AMERICAN BEAUTY

American Beauty…Look Closer
My first reaction after seeing Sam Mendes' feature film directorial debut, American
Beauty, is that it disturbed me. I walked out of the theater in a virtually bewildered
state of mind. This is the kind of movie that makes you wonder about what really is
beautiful, and where can you find this beauty. Is it something that is in the happenings
of an ordinary day or in the special people that we choose to share our lives with?
American Beauty opens with Lester Burnham's (Kevin Spacey) declaration that, "I'm 42
years old. In less than a year I'll be dead. Of course I don't know that yet. In a way
I'm dead already." In this simple manner the film establishes its somber tone, its dry
sense of humor, its non-linear narration, and its character's fate. Having revealed the
fatal outcome, what follows is a brief view of the final days of Lester's frustrated
life; of his wife Carolyn's (Annette Bening) constant belittling of him and all things
associated with him; and of their daughter Jane's (Thora Birch) overpowering contempt
towards both of them. (Review, www.cinephiles.net). 
"American Beauty accurately and purposefully describes the meaninglessness and loneliness
of the current moment in much of America. It's a story that finds its source on the pages
of daily newspapers, with a group of characters we all know well from our neighborhood
store, from our personal histories, or at least from television. It gives us a family we
would pretty much expect: the Defeated Father; the Isolated Mother; the Jaded Teen. It
gives us the Neat Gay Couple; the Homophobic Narrow Conservative, and the Oversexed Teen.
These people are types, but they are not mere jokes. These people exist in America, and
they exist in full. These people are our neighbors, and if we "look closer" as the movie
asks us to do, we'll see that we know people just like this, and that perhaps we are one
or more of these people" (Dodd, www.believe-me.com).