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'''American Beauty''' is a 1999 drama film that explores themes of romantic and paternal love, freedom, sexuality, beauty, self-liberation, existentialism, the search for happiness, and family against the backdrop of modern American suburbia. The film was the screen debut for writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes and starred Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening; all four were nominated for Oscars. In 2000 it won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Contents

Plot summary

Cast

Production

Soundtrack and score

Reception

Awards

Wins

Nominations

References

External links

Plot summary

Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a 42-year-old man living in the suburbs. His wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is an ambitious realtor; his daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is an average teenager but is unhappy with her physical appearance.
Dissatisfied with his average life and sexually frustrated by his wife, Lester finds motivation for transforming himself after meeting Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), Jane's best friend and classmate. Angela, a beautiful, confident, and supposedly promiscuous cheerleader who aspires to be a model, captivates Lester the moment he sees her perform a school dance routine, and he develops an obvious crush on her, much to Jane's embarrassment. Angela, however, finds Lester "sweet" and later comments to Jane that if he were more muscular, she would have sex with him, which Lester overhears. He starts an intensive workout regiment.
Meanwhile, a family consisting of Colonel Frank Fitts, USMC (Chris Cooper), his emotionally-detached wife Barbara (Allison Janney), and their introspective, drug-dealing son Ricky (Wes Bentley) moves next door to the Burnhams. Jane begins to notice Ricky videotaping her through her bedroom window, which secretly flatters her.
Carolyn begins an extramarital affair with rival realtor Buddy, whom she has admired for some time, and at his recommendation decides to begin relieving her stress at a shooting range. Lester quits his job and blackmails his boss for an enormous severance package. Remembering how much he enjoyed his summer as a teenager, he begins work anew at a fast food restaurant. Jane and Ricky bond over camcorder footage of a plastic bag "dancing" in the wind, which Ricky considers the most beautiful thing he has ever recorded. Ricky also bonds with Lester over recollections of a headless man carrying his own head in a B movie entitled Re-Animator and the frank intimacy and honesty that comes with conversations that are fueled with G-13, genetically-engineered, $2000 per 1/8 of an ounce marijuana.
Some time later, Lester catches his wife with her lover at the drive-through window of his fast food restaurant. Despite Lester's calm reaction, Carolyn's lover breaks off their liaison (fearing financial complications in his own divorce), and she angrily drives home with her gun, seemingly with the intention of confronting her husband, believing him to have ruined her life. Lester calls Ricky to the house for marijuana, raising the suspicions of Col. Fitts that the two are involved in a homosexual liaison. He observes Ricky rolling a joint for Lester while he lounges on a couch, but due to his perspective he believes that he has observed his son performing fellatio. Convinced that his son is gay, he later confronts Ricky and threatens to throw him out of the house. Realizing that this will free him from his family, Ricky plays in to his father's mistaken impression. (He even makes up that he turns tricks to play even further into the assumption.) He uses this to finally end the violent relationship with his abusive father. He leaves, and his father simultaneously disowns him.
Ricky goes next door to Jane and asks her if she will travel to live in New York with him. Jane not only agrees, but offers to supply money that she has been saving for a breast augmentation, though Ricky is unconcerned with money as his marijuana sales provide him a steady source of income and a cache of $40,000. Angela, who is visiting Jane's house, accuses both of being "freaks," to which Ricky retorts that she is ugly, ordinary, and boring. Angela is devastated, the implication being that Ricky has exposed her deepest fear; that she suspects she is indeed ordinary. At the same time, Lester is quietly approached in his garage while working out by a distraught Col. Fitts, who has been out in the rain. Lester attempts to comfort Col. Fitts who kisses him, believing him to be a homosexual based on what he had seen earlier. (The implication is that Fitts' homophobia was due in part to his being a closeted gay man. The complexity of this is also reinforced by the subtle suggestion that the Marine Corp colonel also possessed a small token of Nazi memoriabilia.) Lester rejects this advance calmly as a misunderstanding.
Returning to his family room, Lester finds a vulnerable Angela in tears. He admits his attraction to her, and that he has been working out. He begins to make love to her, but suddenly stops and re-connects with his paternal caring for her at the last moment when she admits that she is a virgin. He cannot bring himself to take her virginity and instead makes her a sandwich in the kitchen. For the first time in a long while, Lester realizes that he is truly happy. As Angela heads to the bathroom, Lester contemplates an old photo of his smiling family - unaware that a gun is being held to the back of his head.
The movie ends with Lester's description of his life flashing before his eyes, interspersed with scenes of his family and others at the moment of the gunshot. Ricky and Jane react to the gunshot from the upstairs bedroom, Angela from a bathroom, Carolyn from outside the front door (where she had been approaching the house with her own gun to confront her husband). As Carolyn disposes of her gun and weeps for Lester, Col. Fitts is seen back in his own house removing latex gloves and a blood soaked shirt.
Lester finishes the movie with a tear jerking quote, reciting some words of Ricky and Jane's conversation." I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time... For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars... And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street... Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper... And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird... And Janie... And Janie... And... Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday. "

Cast

★ Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham

★ Annette Bening as Carolyn Burnham

★ Thora Birch as Jane Burnham

★ Wes Bentley as Ricky Fitts

★ Mena Suvari as Angela Hayes

★ Chris Cooper as Colonel Frank Fitts

★ Peter Gallagher as Buddy Kane

★ Allison Janney as Barbara Fitts

Production

Alan Ball originally wrote ''American Beauty'' for the stage. He saw a paper bag floating in the wind near the World Trade Center plaza and was inspired by it to write the film.^[1] Director Sam Mendes eliminated the film's original opening and ending. The film originally began and ended with scenes depicting Ricky and Jane in jail, accused of Lester's murder, and also featured scenes of Lester-as-narrator flying down to visit his neighborhood. In the original version of the script, there was a separate story that included Colonel Fitts having a gay lover who died in Vietnam. It also included a scene in which Lester and Angela had sex.
Many of the school scenes were shot at South High School, in Torrance, CA, and most of the extras in the gym crowd were South High students. Sam Mendes designed the two girls' appearances to change over the course of the film, with Thora Birch gradually using less makeup and Mena Suvari gradually using more, to emphasize his view of their shifting perceptions of themselves.
Singer and dancer Paula Abdul choreographed the cheerleading scene.^[2] During the movie's second dinner scene, Spacey was only supposed to throw the plate of asparagus onto the floor. However, while shooting, Spacey decided to pitch it at the wall. Birch and Bening's surprise reactions are genuine.

Soundtrack and score

Main articles: American Beauty (soundtrack), American Beauty: Original Motion Picture Score

The score to ''American Beauty'' was composed by Thomas Newman. The soundtrack features songs by artists such as The Who, Free, eels, The Folk Implosion, Gomez, and Bob Dylan, as well as a cover version of The Beatles "Because" performed by Elliott Smith (original Beatles recordings are rare in motion pictures and the rights difficult to obtain). The film also features "Don't Let It Bring You Down" performed by Annie Lennox, though this was not included on the soundtrack.
The Orginal Motion Picture Score was later released on January 11, 2000. This contains 19 tracks composed by Thomas Newman for the film.
The score was sampled in the 2000 dance track "American Dream" by Jakatta.

Reception

Three months in advance of the film's opening, ''New York Times'' reviewer Bernard Weinraub described it as "the most talked about film of the moment." The column, which ran on the weekend of July 4, gave few specifics regarding the film itself, but noted that the film was generating "tremendous buzz" within the DreamWorks studio, as the details of how and when the movie would be released were being debated; it also reported that Steven Spielberg (a co-founder of DreamWorks) called the film one of the best he'd seen in years and that Bening was moved to tears at an early screening of the film.
American BJ Michael Sragow

At the Movies Bernard Weinraub

The movie premiered on September 8, 1999, in Los Angeles, California, to reviews that generally reaffirmed the advance hype, uniformly praising the cast, script, and cinematography, as well as the first-time direction by Mendes. Writing for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', Edward Guthman called it "a dazzling tale of loneliness, desire and the hollowness of conformity." Jay Carr for the ''Boston Globe'' called the film "a millennial classic"; the ''New York Post'' called it "a flat-out masterpiece." Among the smaller number of critics who expressed negative opinions of the film were J. Hoberman of the ''Village Voice'' and Wesley Morris of the ''San Francisco Examiner'', both of whom were critical of the film's script and direction, if not its performances.
Boomer Bust J. Hoberman

On September 11, it was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice award just days before its opening. Aided tremendously by the positive press, the film took in $861,531 on its opening weekend in the United States, despite a limited release to only 16 screens. By October, the film was released to a wider audience, and quickly surpassed the film's estimated $15,000,000 production budget. Ultimately, the film would gross $356,296,601 internationally.
Scenes from the Los Angeles and Toronto premieres, as well as other unique footage related to ''American Beauty'', is featured in T.W. Zierra's 2007 documentary ''My Big Break'' which follows Wes Bentley before and after he landed his breakout role as Ricky Fitts.

Awards

The movie dominated the 2000 Oscars, with a total of eight nominations and five wins. It also had another 82 wins and 63 nominations at numerous other award ceremonies.

Wins

★ Academy Award for Best Picture (Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks)

★ Academy Award for Best Actor (Kevin Spacey)

★ Academy Award for Directing (Sam Mendes)

★ Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (Alan Ball)

★ Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Conrad L. Hall)

★ American Comedy Awards, USA: American Comedy Award for Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture (Leading Role)

★ American Society of Cinematographers, USA: ASC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases

★ Australian Film Institute: Best Foreign Film Award

★ BAFTA for Best Film (Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Kevin Spacey)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Annette Bening)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Editing (Tariq Anwar), (Christopher Greenbury)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Music (Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music) (Thomas Newman)

★ BMI Film & TV Awards: BMI Film Music Award

★ Bodil Awards: Bodil for Best American Film (Bedste amerikanske film)

★ Bogey Awards, Germany: Bogey Award

★ British Society of Cinematographers: Best Cinematography Award

★ Grammy Award: Best Score Soundtrack Album (Thomas Newman)

★ Screen Actors Guild Award: Best Actor (Kevin Spacey)

★ Screen Actors Guild Award: Best Actress (Annette Bening)

★ Screen Actors Guild Award: Best Ensemble (Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Mena Suvari, Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, Allison Janney, Peter Gallagher)

Nominations

★ Academy Award for Best Actress (Annette Bening)

★ Academy Award for Original Music Score (Thomas Newman)

★ Academy Award for Film Editing (Tariq Anwar)

★ American Cinema Editors, USA: Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film - Dramatic

★ American Comedy Awards, USA: American Comedy Award for Funniest Motion Picture, Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role)

★ Art Directors Guild: Excellence in Production Design Award for Feature Film

★ Awards of the Japanese Academy: Award of the Japanese Academy for Best Foreign Film

★ BAFTA Award for Best Direction (David Lean Award for Direction) (Sam Mendes)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay - Original (Alan Ball)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Wes Bentley)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Thora Birch)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Mena Suvari)

★ BAFTA Award for Best Sound

★ BAFTA Award for Best Production Design

★ BAFTA Award for Best Make Up/Hair

★ Blockbuster Entertainment Awards: Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Actress - Drama, Favorite Supporting Actor- Drama, Favorite Supporting Actress - Drama, Favorite Actor - Drama, Favorite Actress - Newcomer (Internet Only)

★ BRIT Awards: Brit for Best Soundtrack

★ Chicago Film Critics Association Awards: CFCA Award for Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Actress

★ Cinema Audio Society, USA: C.A.S. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Feature Film

References

1. Statement made during Alan Ball's Oscar acceptance speech
2. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/trivia IMDB trivia page for American Beauty

External links

★ Official website

★

★

★ Trailer

★ Journal of Religion and Film: American Beauty and the Idea of Freedom

★ skyjude - movie legends