AMERICAN BEAUTY

American Beauty starts with a video clip of Jane Burnham (Thora Birch) talking about what a "lame-o" her father Lester (Kevin Spacey) is. The boy filming her asks if she wants him to kill her father. She sits up and in a somewhat brooding profile says, "Yeah, would you?" It's hard to tell if she's serious or not. Her response was dark but somewhat mocking. We next cut to an overhead image of a typical neighborhood, with houses, trees, and grass. Lester narrates, "In less than a year, I'll be dead. Of course, I don't know that yet. And in a way, I'm dead already."

Lester's life is stuck in a rut. He's married to a wife (played by Annette Bening) who doesn't love him, he's a father to a daughter whom he doesn't get along with, and he works for a company he doesn't care about. Lester's life is one big disappointment, played out day after day. He narrates: "Look at me, jerking off in the shower...this will be the high point of my day. It all goes downhill from here." And then we see why.

One of the great things about American Beauty is its use of color and set design to symbolize mood. Just look at the scene of Lester at work, in his cubicle talking to a client with mocking interest in his voice. Everything is white or a dull blue. Everything. It's maddeningly stale; we immediately can understand why Lester is caught in neutral at that job. He is called into Brad Dupree's (Barry Del Sherman) office. Brad is an "efficiency" employee, hired to see who can be fired. And he gives Lester a final chance; Lester is to write a summary of what he does for the company.

And then we go back to his house, where he, his wife, and his daughter are sitting quietly at the table. Indifferent ("elevator") music is on in the background, seemingly laughing at the unhappy family. The music is so out-of-place that it has the glorious effect of being painful to watch. Lester asks if Jane had a good day at school. "It was ok." "Just ok?" And the phony zeal with which he asks the question is equaled by Jane's cold response. "No, Dad. It was spectacular."

The set design for this scene is perfect. Pictures of the family on the walls, just like any household. But they never quite fit in with the atmosphere. They're phony; they are "for show". What really shows is the lone table with three people sitting as far apart from each other as possible. It's as empty as the scene can be; it's an excellent summary of the family's state.

All of this is about to change, though. And the impetus is prompted by their neighbors, who have just moved in. They are the Fitts. The father is Colonel Frank (Chris Cooper), the mother is Barbara (Allison Janney), and the son is Ricky (Wes Bentley). We quickly learn the plagues affecting this family. Colonel Fitts is hopelessly homophobic and is scared his son is a homosexual. Barbara is numb in every sense of the word. She hears things that are not said and cannot grasp one thing that actually is happening. She cooks bacon for Ricky, but Ricky does not eat bacon. "Oh. I must have forgotten." She sits at the couch with her husband, who is watching a military film, but she has no idea it's on. When her son comes home, he sits down with them. A few seconds pass. "What?" she asks. "No one said anything." And she turns her head back to the television. Janney gives one of the key performances in the movie. She is Lester's equivalent in this family. But unlike Lester, she has lost all feeling, all hope. Her means of escape was to stop living. She may not be dead, but she is in an eternal "coma".

Meanwhile, Ricky has had a recent stint at a mental institution. He's frequently called a "psycho" or a crazy person, but he's obviously the most sane person in the movie. He makes lots of money selling drugs (which he covers from his parents by catering jobs--"Never underestimate the power of denial," he says to Lester later in the movie), and he spends most of his free time filming clips of things he's "curious" about. Ricky suffers from his father's ever-present authority. His room is big, full of video tapes and expensive equipment but empty at its center. Ricky's room feels like a jail cell, but he has a window where he can look out and hope for life.

One night he is caught filming Jane. Jane is not amused, but she returns the curiosity. When she and her friend Angela (Mena Suvari) are hanging out outside of the school, he comes up to them. Angela throws the word "psycho" at him, but Jane just stands there quietly. She feels threatened, but her interest outweighs it. Jane has met someone that interests her and, more importantly, has met someone who is interested in her.

When Lester and wife Carolyn go to a real estate dinner, Lester meets Ricky. Ricky offers him a smoke. Ricky's break is not received well by his boss. "I'm not paying you to do whatever you're doing out here." "Then don't pay me." "Excuse me?" "I quit. So you don't have to pay me. Now leave me alone." This is one of Lester's wake-up calls. Why should he be worried about quitting his job? Especially if he doesn't like it? "I think you just became my personal hero!" he tells Ricky.

Lester's second awakening occurs at a basketball game. He is there to watch his daughter perform a cheerleading number at halftime. And then he sees Angela, and he is swept away. In perhaps the most recognized sequence of the film, he then dreams that she is alone on the basketball court, dancing for him alone. She slowly takes off her blouse, and rosebuds emerge from her.

What Lester has found is beauty, in its raw and innocent form. Is it pure? Hardly, since Lester is middle-aged and Angela is a teenager. Is it genuine? To him, undoubtedly. He continues to dream about her. She appears on the ceiling, with rosebuds falling from her and hitting his face. "Spectacular." This is a key phrase. Note the difference in tone when his daughter said it in her mocking description of her day at school versus his genuine happiness when he utters it here. This is one of the film's most interesting effects. In different lights, the same words, phrases, and images mean completely different things.

Carolyn, meanwhile, has a strong desire for success. And success, as she sees it, is symbolized by her competitor Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher), the "king" of real estate. She soon meets for lunch with him, and it grows into a passionate love affair. Kane gives her some advice: "In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times." Carolyn uses this as her motto, but it does not fit her. The reason is because she is not successful, well, not as successful. One of the scenes that truly describes her flaw is when she tries to comfort Jane after Lester blows up at one of their family dinners. When Jane says she wants to be left alone, Carolyn slaps her and says, "Look at what you have! When I grew up, we lived in a duplex...we didn't even have our own house!" And she walks out of the room. Yes, but Jane doesn't have the one thing she needs: a family who cares about her.

Jane has found happiness, though. And that is with Ricky. Ricky shows Jane his father's military collection, which includes an official Nazi plate. Once again, Jane feels threatened, but her interest again overwhelms the feelings of danger. And then Ricky shows her the most beautiful thing he has ever filmed:

It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.

Jane's interest is rewarded. She has found the person she was looking for.

Lester's last day alive features the resolution of these storylines, in an almost outlandish chain of events that borders fantasy but remains so realistic, so necessary for the lives of these people. Carolyn's affair with Kane is discovered by Lester. You see, Lester has quit his job (prompted by his blistering written description of his job to Brad) and now works at Mr. Smiley's, a fast-food restaurant where he has "the least amount of responsibility possible". Carolyn is rattled by her husband's reaction, and she begins to realize just what a failure her life has been. Lester, meanwhile, continues to find life. He now works at a job he enjoys, works out to look better in Angela's eyes (Angela earlier said that if Lester worked out, he'd look "hot"), and buys a 1970 Pontiac Firebird because he always wanted one.

Colonel Fitts is now obsessively concerned that his son is being paid to sleep with Lester (among other men). When Ricky returns to the house after he has sold Lester some more pot, his father asks where he got the money. Colonel Fitts was watching Ricky, and it appeared to him as if he was performing sexual favors for money (Ricky was instead teaching Lester how to roll a joint). In a scene of great power, they exchange heated words:

Ricky: You're right. I suck dick for money.
Frank: Boy...
Ricky: Two thousand dollars. I'm that good.
Frank: Get out.
Ricky: And you should see me fuck. I'm the best piece of ass in three states.
Frank: Get out. I don't ever want to see you again.
Ricky (after a long pause): What a sad old man you are.

There is more power to these words than at first realized. When Frank goes over to the Burnhams' house to confront Lester, we soon understand just what the homophobic mindset of Frank really implies.

Ricky asks Jane to move to New York City with him; she agrees. Angela thinks the move is ridiculous. "Why do you care?" Jane asks. "Because I'm your friend," she replies. And then Ricky has words that shatter Angela's whole existence. "No, you're not. You just use her so you can feel better about yourself." Angela then calls him a freak. Jane replies that she herself is too, and Angela could never be because she's just "too perfect." "Yeah, well at least I'm not ugly!" she retorts. "Yeah, you are," says Ricky. "And you're boring and totally ordinary and you know it." And the thing is, he's exactly right. And we've known all along that this is the one thing Angela feared about herself.

Angela storms off. Lester soon discovers her and is about to have sex with her. But Angela then says that she is a virgin (probably the first honest thing she has said about herself in the whole movie), and Lester stops. Lester cannot go through with it. Lester will not destroy Angela's beauty, but he will always appreciate it. This is Angela's freedom, a person who cares more about her than her body. And with few words spoken, we sense both of their freedoms: "How are you?" she asks. "I'm great."

These six people (Lester, Carolyn, Jane, Ricky, Frank, and Angela) have all discovered themselves. They now know who they are and who they want to be. They may not have made it to the point of happiness, but their realizations are a starting point. Lester's wake-up calls were equaled by others. Take Ricky, whose wake-up call was filming Jane, his source of human beauty. Or Jane, who watches Ricky film a dead bird because it's beautiful. Or Carolyn, who realizes (when she loses Lester) she's lost the one thing in her life that wasn't material. Or Angela, whose innocence was maintained by a man who could have taken it. Or even Frank, whose discovery about himself leads to his ultimate destruction but also to his necessary self-realization. All of these moments are magical, unimaginably powerful. And all of them are so miraculously simple.

Lester sits in the kitchen, staring at a picture of his family (Note that this picture of his family now has a completely different impact than with its first appearance). "Man, oh man," he says. "Man, oh man, oh man." And Lester is shot to death at the moment when life was at its fullest. And when Ricky discovers him, he stares at him and says, "Wow." Ricky knows what beauty is, and he knew that Lester had found it.