Film Review of American Beauty
Film Review of American Beauty
I am doing a review on the movie “American Beauty” I decided on focusing on one character . The character I will be focusing on is, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey). Kevin Spacey turns in a sharp performance as your everyday average Joe who’s finally fed up with his life. It’s just that his life is unusually miserable: It’s just painfully monotonous. He’s stuck in a loveless marriage to a woman obsessed with materialism, his job doesn’t offer him the respect he deserves, and his daughter and wife both don’t really give a damn about him on e way or the other. As the central character, he narrates the opening of the story, and starts it off with a shocker in the first 3 minutes: He says” I’m a 42 year old and even though I don’t know it, in less than a year I’ll be dead.” the statement, relayed and such simplicity, immediately grabs your attention and sets up some anticipation of what’s about to come. What follows is the nightmarishly boring life Spacey’s character leads. We watch as his icy wife drives around her Mercedes minivan and closes real estates deals all while he puts up with this crap, until one day he says that enough.
Lester Burnham decides to make a few changes in his rut life, changes that are less midlife crisis than adolescence reborn. The freer he gets the happier he gets, which is more maddening to his wife, Carolyn, and daughter Jane - especially when he turns his lustful gaze toward Jane’s friend, the sultry Angela. Which causes him to start lifting weighs in the nude after hearing Angela teasingly tell Jane she thinks her dad is hot. Carolyn responds by focusing her attention on real estate colleague Buddy Kane. Lester then meets Ricky Fitts, the son of the family that just moved in next door. Ricky is a philosopher and a drug dealer, and starts turning Lester on to weed of his younger, wilders day. With al these momentous events around, Lester drops out of his suburban grind and rebels, in small ways, against the phoniness.
When he’s asked to write a letter describing his job to a corporate consultant, relates with sarcasm, blackmail and resignation then goes off to actually enjoy life instead of being a slave to. In...