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American Beauty (film)
American Beauty is a 1999 drama film set in modern American suburbia. Starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening, it was the feature film debut for writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes. A massive success both critically and commerically, all four were nominated for Academy Awards, and the film won a total of five including Best Picture.
PlotLester Burnham (Spacey) is a 42-year-old father and advertising executive who serves as the film's narrator. Lester's family life is messyhis wife Carolyn (Bening) is an ambitious realtor who feels that she is unsuccessful at fulfilling her potential, and his 16-year-old daughter Jane (Birch) is unhappy and struggling with self-esteem issues. Lester himself is a self-described loser: boring, faceless and easy to forget. Lester is reinvigorated, however, when he meets Jane's friend and classmate Angela Hayes (Suvari) at a high school basketball game. Lester immediately develops an obvious infatuation with Angela, much to his daughter's embarrassment. Throughout the film, Lester has fantasies involving a sexually aggressive Angela and red rose petals. The Burnhams' new neighbors are Col. Frank Fitts, USMC (Cooper), his distracted wife Barbara (Janney), and his son Ricky (Bentley). When confronted with the gay couple living two doors down, Col. Fitts displays a distinctly bigoted attitude. Unhappy with their lives, each of the Burnhams individually makes a life-changing choice designed to shake up their boring life for the better. Carolyn meets real estate rival Buddy Kane for a business lunch and ends up beginning an affair with him. She also frequents a local firing range. Lester blackmails his boss for $60,000, quits his job and takes up low-pressure employment as a burger-flipper at a fast food chain. He continues to liberate himself by trading in his Toyota Camry for his dream car, continuing to work out, and smoking marijuana. Jane and Ricky bond over their need for companionship and their lack of fulfillment with daily homelife. Jane finds herself growing distant from Angela, while Ricky befriends Lester and acts as Lester's marijuana supplier. Col. Fitts, concerned over the growing relationship between Lester and Ricky, roots through his son's possessions - falsely believing that Lester is seducing his son. Buddy and Carolyn are found out by Lester, who seems to be completely unfazed by his wife's infidelity except for him saying "You don't get to tell me what to do--EVER AGAIN." Carolyn, who is almost more devastated by Lester's indifference than by her being exposed as an adulteress, is further dismayed when Buddy reacts by breaking off the affair. One night, Ricky returns home to find his father waiting for him with fists and vitriol, thinking his son is gay. Realising this as an opportunity for freedom, Ricky falsely agrees that he is gay and goads his violent father until he is thrown out. Ricky rushes to Jane's house and asks her to flee with him to New York City - something she agrees to, much to the dismay of Angela, who is sleeping over at the Burnham's house. Ricky tells Angela she's boring and totally ordinary, and Angela lashes out at both of them and stomps away. Lester finds an emotionally fragile Col. Fitts standing outside in the pouring rain and attempts to comfort him, but is taken by surprise when Fitts kisses him. Lester gently rebuffs him. Fitts, shamed and broken, wanders back into the rain. Meanwhile, Carolyn sits alone in her car on the side of the road, holding her gun and becoming more and more infuriated at the day's turn of events. Lester finds a distraught Angela and is on the edge of consummating their relationship, but the seduction is derailed when she confesses that she is a virgin. Lester immediately withdraws, his affections shifting to that of a father-figure, and they bond over their shared frustrations with and concern for Jane, Lester seeming to be pleased when Angela tells him Jane's in love. Angela asks how he's feeling and he realizes, to his surprise, that he feels great. After Angela excuses herself to the bathroom, a happy Lester sits at the table alone until he is abruptly shot in the head. An image of Col. Frank Fitts with blood on his shirt and a gun missing from his collection reveal him to be the killer. The various family members find Lester's body: Carolyn breaks down sobbing in the closet holding a row of Lester's shirts, Jane looks on in shock, and Ricky smiles sadly because Lester's death expression is so peaceful and content. Lester narrating, looks back on the events of his life, and is content because he has reawakened and experienced beauty in the world. He tells the audience they can't understand now what he means, but he finishes the film by saying "Don't worry...you will someday." Cast
ProductionAlan 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] Many of the school scenes were shot at South High School in Torrance, California, 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 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 improvised and pitched it at the wall, bringing about genuine reactions of shock to Bening and Birch's faces. Deleted plotlinesAccording to Chris Cooper, much of Col. Fitts' backstory was eliminated from the final script, in which Fitts is a closeted homosexual who lost his male lover during the Vietnam War.[3] Alan Ball's original screenplay had opening and ending scenes in which Col. Fitts frames Jane and Ricky for the murder of Lester. They go to jail, but Col. Fitts' wife finds his bloody shirt. After shooting these scenes, Sam Mendes removed many of them for the first cut, feeling that they made the film lose its mystery.[4] Although Ball and Mendes initially disagreed, Ball accepted the new version after Mendes made further cuts to that part of the plot, which "worked on the page but not really on screen."[5] In the DVD commentary, Mendes refers to deleted scenes for the viewer to find on the disc. However, these scenes are not on the DVD as he had changed his mind after recording the commentary.[6] Soundtrack and scoreThe score to American Beauty was composed by Thomas Newman, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. The soundtrack features songs by artists such as The Who, Free, Eels, The Guess Who, The Folk Implosion, Gomez, and Bob Dylan, as well as a cover version of The Beatles "Because" performed by Elliott Smith. The film also features "Don't Let It Bring You Down" performed by Annie Lennox, though this was not included on the soundtrack. The Original 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. ReceptionThree months before the film's opening, New York Times reviewer Bernard Weinraub described it as "the most talked about film of the moment." His column, which ran on the weekend of July 4, gave few specifics regarding the film but noted that it was generating "tremendous buzz" in the DreamWorks studio, as the details of how and when the movie would be released were debated; it also reported that Steven Spielberg (a co-founder of DreamWorks) called the film one of the best he had seen in years and that Bening was moved to tears at an early screening.[7][8] 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.[9] 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. After its total theatre count steadily dropped near the end of 1999 and the start of 2000, it was given a wider relaunch after it received several Academy Award nominations. Ultimately, the film would gross $356,296,601 internationally.[10] Scenes from the Los Angeles and Toronto premieres, as well as other unique footage related to American Beauty, are featured in the 2008 documentary My Big Break, directed by T.W. Zierra, which follows Wes Bentley before and after he landed his breakout role as Ricky Fitts. Overall, the film was well-received by critics, with an 90% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. AwardsThe 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
Nominations
In popular culture
ReferencesExternal links
bs:Ameri?ka ljepota bg:??????????? ???????? ca:American Beauty da:American Beauty de:American Beauty (Film) et:Tabamatu ilu el:American Beauty es:American Beauty eu:American Beauty fa:?????? ???????? (????) fr:American Beauty gl:American Beauty hr:Vrtlog ?ivota id:American Beauty (film) it:American Beauty he:?????? ????? hu:Amerikai szépség mk:??????????? ??????? mr:??????? ??????, ??????? nl:American Beauty ja:???????????? no:American Beauty (film) pl:American Beauty (film 1999) pt:American Beauty ru:??????? ??-??????????? (?????) sr:???????? ?????? fi:American Beauty sv:American Beauty tr:Amerikan Güzeli zh:?????? Source: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article
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