Film Review-American Beauty

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"American Beauty" is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. It won five Academy Awards.

Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged magazine writer who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela (Mena Suvari). Annette Bening co-stars as Lester's materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane; Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper and Allison Janney also feature. The film has been described by academics as a satire of American middle class notions of beauty and personal satisfaction; analysis has focused on the film's explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, beauty, materialism, self-liberation and redemption.

"American Beauty" is a comedy because we laugh at the absurdity of the hero's problems. Nothing beats death for establishing a detached, omniscient point of view, and from the very beginning of Sam Mendes's haunting and accomplished debut feature (and one of the year's first significant films), it's made clear that its hero, middle-aged, middle-class lost soul Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a goner. Lester's flashback voiceover narration has the sardonic serenity of the beyond, an anarchistic wisdom as he observes himself jerking off in the shower ("This will be the highlight of my day), spies on wife Carolyn (a strident and fragile Annette Bening) tending the title roses ("See how her clogs match the handles of her pruning shears?

It's not a coincidence."), or looks in on sullen and unhappy daughter Jane (Thora Birch, with soulful, accusing eyes) surfing the Internet for breast augmentation sites ("I'd tell her things get better, but I don't want to lie").His secret? "In less than a year,

I'll be dead. . . . But in a sense, I'm dead already."

The movie is about a man who fears growing older, losing the hope of true love and not being respected by those who know him best. If you never experience those feelings, The launch of a classified advertisement. People want to take lessons from you.

"American beauty" is a picture of American Graffiti, it contains a lot of social problems are prevalent in developed countries. Such as money worship caused by mental stress, the monotony of life, Personal frustration, sex, drugs, violence and so on. Empathy for American audiences everywhere and film details resonate.

Lester's, the hero of "American Beauty," is played by Kevin Spacey as a man who is unloved by his daughter, ignored by his wife and unnecessary at work. "I'll be dead in a year," he tells us in almost the first words of the movie. "In a way, I'm dead already." The movie is the story of his rebellion.

We meet his wife, Carolyn , so perfect her garden shears are coordinated with her footwear. We meet his daughter Jane , who is saving up for breast implants even though augmentation is clearly unnecessary; perhaps her motivation is not to become more desirable to men, but to make them miserable about what they can't have.

"American Beauty" is not about a Lolita relationship, anyway. It's about yearning after youth, respect, power and, of course, beauty. The moment a man stops dreaming is the moment he petrifies inside and starts writing snarly letters disapproving of paragraphs like the one above. Lester's thoughts about Angela are impure, but not perverted; he wants to do what men are programmed to do, with the most beautiful

woman he has ever seen.

Angela is not Lester's highway to bliss, but she is at least a catalyst for his freedom. His thoughts, and the discontent they engender, blast him free from years of emotional paralysis, and soon he makes a cheerful announcement at the funereal dinner table: "I quit my job, told my boss to himself and blackmailed him for $60,000." Has he lost his mind? There is no point. The first thing he spends money on is perfectly reasonable: a bright red 1970 Pontiac Firebird.

Carolyn and Jane are going through their own romantic troubles. Lester finds out Carolyn is cheating when he sees her with her lover in the drive-through lane of a fast-food restaurant. Jane is being videotaped by Ricky , the boy next door, who has a strange light in his eyes. Ricky's dad is a former Marine who tests him for drugs, taking a urine sample every six months; Ricky plays along to keep the peace until he can leave home.

All of these emotional threads come together during one dark and stormy night, when there is a series of misunderstandings so bizarre they belong in a screwball comedy. And at the end, somehow, improbably, the film snatches victory from the jaws of defeat for Lester, its hero. Not the kind of victory you'd get in a feel-good movie, but the kind where you prove something important, if only to yourself.

"American Beauty" is not as dark or twisted as "Happiness," last year's attempt to shine a light under the rock of American society. It's more about sadness and loneliness than about cruelty or inhumanity. Nobody is really bad in this movie, just shaped by society in such a way they can't be themselves, or feel joy.

It seems that beauty is free, Is to break the confines of the thought, Is the free spirit. However, Leicester was eventually killed a gun, although he had just escaped from the ugly world, Just feel the beauty of life. It seems that the real "American Beauty" is miles away. We can only be in dream fantasy of their wake up.

Undisguised said, "American Beauty" is a masterpiece, Is undoubtedly the best picture of the year, Is the history of the classic.