The title of ‘American Beauty’ gives an immediate clue as to what one of the main themes of the film will be. The entire film deals with the American perception of Beauty, how skewed and corrupted that ideal can sometimes be. The film suggests that beauty and the pursuit of beauty and ideal happiness can sometimes lead to unhappiness and a shallow meaningless life.
Throughout the film Lester becomes obsessed by one of his daughter’s friends, Angela. Angela is the archetypal American Beauty, blonde, slim and clear skinned. She is also desperately unhappy and wants nothing more than attention to reassure her that she is attractive and desirable. Her only sense of self worth comes from other people. She lies about her sexual experience to try and improve her social standing, in a misguided belief that it will make people respect and admire her.
Anther character in the film who is obsessed with outward displays of beauty is Carolyn, Lester’s wife. She has started to loss any sense of self identity as well, caring only about the out ward appearance of her life, and not about its true substance. She belittles her daughter and her husband, because she feels they let down the perfect life she has worked so hard to create. Her obsession with artifice instead of reality and emotion begins to infuriate Lester. “This isn’t living! It’s just stuff!” he fumes at one point during the movie. (One interesting thing to note about Carolyn is the fact that she decorates her home with red roses, whose trade name is “American beauty.” These roses are bred to have a perfect appearance, but never mature into full blooms, and have no scent. This is a clever comment on Carolyn’s life: attractive, but with no life or spirit.)
The only character in the entire movie who seems to have a divergent view of beauty is Ricky, Lester’s next door neighbor. Ricky carries a video camera with him every where, and films things he thinks are interesting or beautiful. Rickey ignores Angela’s conventional beauty in favor of her friend Jane’s more interesting looks. Ricky, unlike the other characters in the film, is able to see the beauty in the happenings of every day life.
The movie follows Lester’s mid-life crisis, and his “waking up” from the ingrained belief that he should follow a carefully set path for his life. Lester becomes obsessed with beauty, in the form on Angela, and then realizes how shallow he has been. By the end of the film, when Lester is looking back over his life, he realizes what was truly beautiful. It’s wasn’t the shallow fleeting attractiveness of Angela, it was the people he connected with during his life, and the beauty of his entire life seen as whole.
Throughout the film Lester becomes obsessed by one of his daughter’s friends, Angela. Angela is the archetypal American Beauty, blonde, slim and clear skinned. She is also desperately unhappy and wants nothing more than attention to reassure her that she is attractive and desirable. Her only sense of self worth comes from other people. She lies about her sexual experience to try and improve her social standing, in a misguided belief that it will make people respect and admire her.
Anther character in the film who is obsessed with outward displays of beauty is Carolyn, Lester’s wife. She has started to loss any sense of self identity as well, caring only about the out ward appearance of her life, and not about its true substance. She belittles her daughter and her husband, because she feels they let down the perfect life she has worked so hard to create. Her obsession with artifice instead of reality and emotion begins to infuriate Lester. “This isn’t living! It’s just stuff!” he fumes at one point during the movie. (One interesting thing to note about Carolyn is the fact that she decorates her home with red roses, whose trade name is “American beauty.” These roses are bred to have a perfect appearance, but never mature into full blooms, and have no scent. This is a clever comment on Carolyn’s life: attractive, but with no life or spirit.)
The only character in the entire movie who seems to have a divergent view of beauty is Ricky, Lester’s next door neighbor. Ricky carries a video camera with him every where, and films things he thinks are interesting or beautiful. Rickey ignores Angela’s conventional beauty in favor of her friend Jane’s more interesting looks. Ricky, unlike the other characters in the film, is able to see the beauty in the happenings of every day life.
The movie follows Lester’s mid-life crisis, and his “waking up” from the ingrained belief that he should follow a carefully set path for his life. Lester becomes obsessed with beauty, in the form on Angela, and then realizes how shallow he has been. By the end of the film, when Lester is looking back over his life, he realizes what was truly beautiful. It’s wasn’t the shallow fleeting attractiveness of Angela, it was the people he connected with during his life, and the beauty of his entire life seen as whole.
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