American Beauty

American Beauty (france: American Beauté ) is an American film carried out by Sam Mendes, left in 1999.

Synopsis

The Burnham family seems to be, with the first access, an ordinary American family. However, the lack of communication and frustration bring quickly to a total disordered state: the father falls in love with the young person and pretty girlfriend from his daughter while the mother misleads her husband with an real estate agent which she admires. The girl, as for it, approaches the son of the neighbor. The film constitutes a funny and wild criticism American lifestyle.

General comment

The spectator knows of entry the finality of the history: the death of the protagonist. The history is told by the main character himself. It will show and comment on the last year of its life. Any scenario consists of three acts; here, the account even is parcelled out him in three parts.

In the first part, one discovers Lester, his life of dead loss, his work and his family which mistakes it. The meeting with Angela will give like a direction to the life To ballast and its new objective will be the conquest of Angela, which symbolizes the beauty and especially freedom. For that, it will make musculation to allure it. This act is closed by the first rebellion To ballast against monotony of its life and its prison represented by his wife. In the second part, Lester is released, it becomes again the teenager who it was and discovers a certain happiness in its life which it compares with a hell. It approaches its goal little by little. The third part of film shows the last day of the life To ballast. The characters show their reasons in turn to want some To perhaps ballast up to the point to even kill it. To ballast achieved its goal but retracts at the last time, carrying out its error, it still reaches a happiness much larger: he becomes a free man, serene, in agreement with itself and the world which surrounds it. It is at this time unfortunately that he is assassinated. The film ends by reality on the identity of the murderer and in teaching that Lester received at the time of its death.

American Beauty is a criticism of the american company and says what few American films dare to say. It is a criticism of the American ordinary company which tries to hide disastrous existences after a fashion. Kevin Spacey is brilliant in a role of lamentable losing and poor father. Its midlife crisis will make it possible to raise the veil on too ordinary lives to be honest. The film denounces a hypocritical company whose only obsession is appearance external of success (the protagonists affirm it them-even: " To succeed in the life, the impression should be given to succeed in all circonstances" ). However, this company is corroded interior by frustration destroying of this manner the famous American dream. American Beauty saves nothing nor anybody; puritanism, patriotism, car-motivation, capacity, and culture of the company take some for their rank.

The film starts extremely, showing Lester under the shower masturbating. The character acknowledges in the content that it is the best moment of its day. That proposes its sexual frustration. The character, indeed, more did not have sexual relationships since strong a long time with his wife who is rather materialist, obsessed by the money, his career, and the furniture of his house. Under this pretense of marital happiness a more serious problem of the american company appears. Because of this frustration, the character is brought to fantasmer on one of the girlfriends of school of his daughter. Angela incarnates perfectly the American beauty represented in the phantasms To ballast by rose petals fresh in opposition to the pinks planted and cut in the garden of his wife which are quite real and which refer to a fixed beauty and the absence of sexual desire. This denounces America with the puritan accesses where however fathers violent of the young girls. This sexual frustration also visible at Carolyn, which will find satisfaction elsewhere, and in the neighbor, is translated by his homophobie testifying to a puritan education where these tendencies are rejected.

American Beauty attacks patriotism then. The neighbor is a colonel with the retirement which made his woman a zombie (It seems in fact that she is reached Maladie of Alzheimer) and who does not hesitate to raise his son towards the right way with punch. The logical reaction of this last vis-a-vis these severe and violent methods makes of him a drug trafficker. The film vision of war imposed by the father refers to preserving America. But where the film goes still further, it is in the denunciation of the Fascism which results from an exaggerated patriotism and a militarist culture. One discovers a plate of the Third Reich decorated of a swastika in the private collection of the colonel. Rickey adds the precision of the scarcity of this object and the covetousness of the collectors concerning this object. The film thus puts the finger on the hypocrisy of a company which on television banishes a nudity declared unhealthy but which, however, lets sell openly scraping-knives S and other photographs of Hitler in its stores of antiquities.

The film criticizes then the culture of the capacity by the car-motivation. The film takes the perfect example of the field of the real estate, one of the most aggressive and competing industries in America. The lover of Carolyn is not other than the " King of Immobilier". He will communicate his secrecy of success to him, his thirst for being able (while sealing its sexual thirst). One shows us a world thus where to give the illusion to be a winner is the key to success. This culture of the capacity is also done by the listening of cassettes of car-motivation which is a culture specific to the american company. This culture can take various forms: booklets, posters, vidéos… for ordinary citizens in evil of success. The feeling of the capacity is also evoked by the wearing of firearms, visible by the collection of weapons of the colonel and the drive with the shooting which from now on Carolyn follows.

American Beauty is caught some finally with the culture of the company. To ballast is confronted with a young wolf whose presence is only used to justify abusive layoffs. The film does not attack only with the precariousness and the not very credible reasons of dismissals, but especially the abuses which even reign in the large companies. There is here the example of a large company of management whose chairmen offer call-girls on the back of the company and of Kevin Spacey which makes blackmail with the sexual harassment.

More than all these precise attacks, in fact the American dream takes a blow of it. For the Burnham family, the American dream is finally reached: Burnham are owners of a large house in suburbs with a beautiful garden, a beautiful furniture, advantageous wages, a nice and reasonable girl and a van. However, this American dream is completely discredited and is only one illusion since none the characters is happy and that the family core explodes with the final one. The characters made the choice of this race to apparent happiness to appear normal by sacrificing their personal passions until forgetting some to even live. Only the girl, the most lucid member in spite of her marginal aspect, includes/understands this failure of the company. She will find happiness and the beauty only through the camera of her buddy (the son of the colonel), him so marginal and which was interned in a psychiatric hospital. One has a doubt about their mental health of with their confessions of fatal desires. Finally, both will find the beauty of the world through the camera which constitutes a filter.

Data sheet

Title: American Beauty
Realization: Sam Mendes
Scenario: Alan Ball
Production: Bruce Cohen, daN Jinks, Alan Ball and Stan Wlodkowski
Production company: DreamWorks SKG
Budget: 15 million dollars
Music: Thomas Newman
Photography: Conrad L. Hall
Assembly: Tariq Anwar and Christopher Greenbury
Decorations: Naomi Shohan
Costumes: Julie Weiss
Country of origin: the United States
Format: Colors - 2,35:1 - SDR/Dolby DIGITAL/SDDS - 35 mm
Kind: Drama
Lasted: 122 minutes
Comings out date: September 8th 1999 (first in Los Angeles), October 1st 1999 (the United States), February 2nd 2000 (Belgium, France, Switzerland)
Film prohibited with less than 12 years at the time of its exit into the room in France; but very public DVD.

Distribution

Kevin Spacey : To ballast Burnham, the father
Annette Bening: Carolyn Burnham, the mother
Torah Birch: Jane Burnham, the young girl
Carried out Suvari: Angela Beam, the girlfriend of Jane
Peter Gallagher: Buddy Kane, the lover of Carolyn
Wes Bentley: Ricky Fitts, the son of the neighbors
Allison Janney: Barbara Fitts, the neighbor of the family Burnham
Chris Cooper: colonel Frank Fitts, the neighbor of the family Burnham
Scott Bakula: neighbor of Burnham, homosexual.

Around film

turning began the December 14th 1998 and was held with Long Beach, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Torrance.

Original soundtrack

Because , interpreted by Elliott Smith
One Broadway , composed by Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller
Tenderfoot , interpreted by Zen Dadio
All Right Now , interpreted by Free
We Haven' T Turned Around , interpreted by Gums
Something Grand , interpreted by Hilton Ruiz Ensemble
American Woman , interpreted by The Guess Who
All Along The Watchtower , interpreted by Bob Dylan
Uses Me , interpreted by Bill Withers
Cancer For The Cure , interpreted by The Eels
The Seeker , interpreted by The Who
Don' T Rain One My Parade , interpreted by Bobby Darin
As Long Ace I' m Singing , interpreted by Bobby Darin
Open The Door , interpreted by Betty Carter
Don' T Let It Bring You Down , interpreted by Annie Lennox
Call Me Irresponsible , interpreted by Bobby Darin
Where Coils Has Gone , interpreted by Bobby Darin
Bali Ha' I , interpreted by Peggy Lee
Free To Go , interpreted by The Folk Implosion

Rewards

Oscars of best film, better realizer, better original screenplay, better actor (Kevin Spacey) and better photography in 2000.
Golden Globes of best film, better realizer and better original screenplay in 2000.
Nomination with the César of best foreign film in 2001.
Grammy Award of the best film original soundtrack in 2001.
BAFTA of the best film

External bond

American Beauty on Internet Movie Database

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