By Hannah Bower; Photo Credits to Hannah Bower
Recently I had to watch the 1999 film American Beauty, starring Kevin Spacey, for my screenwriting class. Directed by Sam Mendes, the movie has won several Academy Awards and is critically acclaimed, but regarding my own personal taste, I have to pass on this one. A fair warning that the discussion of this film involves some dark, potentially triggering content, so proceed with caution.
The film follows Lester, a suburban husband and father, who is sick of the life he has. His marriage is falling apart with his wife Carolyn who works as a real estate agent, and his teenage daughter Jane has no respect for him. He then decides to reinvent himself by quitting his job, smoking marijuana, and working out on a regular basis. The disturbing part involves the motivation for this sudden shift, which is the pursuit of Jane’s friend Angela.
Lester has the mentality that he is a teenager again, which causes him to lash out at his family when they criticize his behavior. Meanwhile, Carolyn’s mental state deteriorates every day as she is unable to sell a house and feels trapped by her marriage. She takes the liberty of having an affair with another man.
Jane may be the most sympathetic character, in my opinion. Her frustrations with her family only make for a toxic home environment, causing her to seek a relationship with Ricky, their neighbor, who has an abusive father and tries to get fulfillment through the lens of a camera. Both of them have a deep desire to escape their current situation, which made me want to root for them.
What stuck with me as I watched this film was the emphasis on the ideal suburbia life that is often far from perfect. The thematics were well done, and many of the characters came with a twist that forced me to view them a bit differently than I had at the beginning. “Traditional” American families often have values ingrained in them that they are unable to follow. In reality, many people do not fit into these boxes=.
Despite all of this, certain choices in the way the characters were written were what made me want to stop watching. There may have been a bit of internalized misogyny when the writers were creating their female characters. Carolyn felt like a stereotype of the repressed wife that descends into hysteria. More importantly, Angela’s enjoyment of Lester’s attention made me cringe a bit. For those who can’t separate fiction from reality, it is portrayals like these that encourage the objectification of women, especially teenagers.
In our class, we talked a lot about the “save the cat” moment in a movie. This is when the main character has one redeeming moment in a film where audiences otherwise wouldn’t like them. In this case, Lester did not change my feelings about his character. Without giving too much away, he does the bare minimum that doesn’t make him a decent person, just someone who would avoid going to prison.
American Beauty had a lot of potential, and if it weren’t for the poor character choices, I would recommend it. Despite the resonant themes, if I don’t want the protagonist to win, I have no reason to care about them.