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While I personally believe that knowing some details about a movie will not hinder your enjoyment of the film, I recommend you not read this until you've seen Sam Mendes' American Beauty. There will be some spoilers throughout this pseudo-review, including a give-away about the ending. You have been duly warned.
It's fantastic to me that American Beauty was ever made. Until 1999, everyone would look at me like I was insane when I said something like "beauty is everywhere" or "even in the ugliest things beauty can be found." I was regarded as a crackpot, a wackaloon.
Now, though, people think I've hit something extremely intelligent and insightful when I say this shit. Do I mean it? Of course I mean it! It's nice now that people don't think I should be locked away because they saw Ricky Fitts say things like this on some movie. But why does it take a movie for people to deem my existential ramblings as being sane? Beauty is everywhere, I believe it now as much as ever; my love of this film has only reinforced this idea for me.
The idea of beauty being prevalent everywhere is of course the main idea of American Beauty, with Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) trying to regain his youth and finally coming to this conclusion immediately before having a bullet put through his head. Seeing his daughter's gorgeous friend at a high school football game breaks him out of his middle age funk, and he finds the courage to stand up to his "money grubbing freak" of a wife. He starts smoking pot and working at a fast food place so he can relive his teen years of "minimal responsibility." Meanwhile, Ricky Fitts seems to have already found his niche. He records everything simply so he can remember what he saw with his eyes. "Normal" is boring and soulless.
So, is "normal" boring? What is normal, anyway? Normal appears to be following what other people are doing simply because other people are doing. Ricky sells pot, not exactly a top of the line legitimate enterprise. I've heard a light amount of criticism over this fact; as if the film is saying that smoking weed is going to bring you freedom. I don't see that at all. I see it as showing how close minded some people are. Ricky's father, as we learn eventually, put Ricky in a military school when he was caught smoking pot. At one shocking point in the final act Ricky is thrown out when his father suspects him of being a homosexual.
Apparently, normal is doing the thing you're expected to do and not what you want to do or what feels right. So what if your neighbors (Jim and Jim) are gay? Does this make them bad people? Similarly, is Ricky a bad person simply because he's selling drugs?
Normal is not where I want to be. Normal is so lifeless, so BORING. Normal isn't reading Romeo and Juliet and being moved to tears in this day and age. Normal is buying a house, working at a job you hate all your life, and dying of boredom and anxiety before you're 50. Life is, of course, what you make of it. Lester learned this the day he started fantasizing about a sexpot high school student. Sure, he was dead within a year. But he did more living in that year than most of us have done in our entire lives. If you're bored, scared, tired, depressed, whatever, make change. Change isn't easy, I know this. But change is inevitable for survival.
Do I recommend we all live hard and burn out young? No, I want to live for a while. But I plan to make every moment work so that I'm having a good time. Recently, I was sitting outside with a friend of mine when she revealed that she felt the world was a dark and cruel place. No arguments here, the world is predominantly a dark place. But there are lights in the dark, and I said as much. Life's worthless if you're not having fun. When she said, "what if you're not having fun?" my heart broke. It's been nearly two months since this conversation and I still can't get over it. What if you're not having fun? Is giving up really the solution? I've since decided no. Change is always possible. If you're dating someone you're sick of, give it up and move on. If you're working somewhere you hate, quit.
Yes, life is dark and unfair and sometimes quite bloody. If you quit that job, you might just have to cut back for a while. But I've always felt that the meaning of life is to get as much of a good time as you can out of it. Make the best of things. Don't expect the best of every situation, but don't throw your hands up when the worst comes your way.
So what's the point of this whole thing?
I proudly say that I identify wholly with Ricky Fitts and Lester Burnham, and I did before I ever heard of this film. Change. Catharsis. Beauty. Let go of the little shit. So what if that couch is a $4,000 Italian silk sofa? It's just a sofa.
It's all just so fascinating that slews of literature and films came out in such a brief period of time that whole heartedly embraced the idea of saying "fuck it" to the world of Calvin Klein and professional sports in favor of just sitting back and enjoying things. Do you want a job that turns you into a soulless slave just because it pays a 6-figure salary? Of course, there's a subtle difference between this and nihilism. I don't want to tell everything to fuck off; I'm just blowing off the small things.
Maybe that's a bad thing, and maybe it's a healthy way to think. The most profound decisions we face in life are always the ones we constantly think about later, wondering "what ifs" until the stars fall from the sky. But do we really want to constantly think about regrets and the "what ifs" in our lives? Lester finds himself living in the past, and in the conclusion of the film he acknowledges his present. When the supposed sexpot Angela reveals "I've never done this before" Lester suddenly ends his reign as a horny teenager and becomes a father. No more "what ifs"; thinking about his past and wishing it could all be the same again (like when he says "I used to work all summer flipping burgers just to buy an 8-track…it was great"), Lester realizes that the present can be every bit as fruitful and happy as the past. If life was so great in the past, why bother trying to relive it when you have such great memories?
Lester becomes a father again, a man who genuinely cares and wants to know how his daughter is doing. It's absolutely classic when Spacey smiles in absolute contentment when he realizes that Jane (daughter) is in love.
Beauty is everywhere, my dear readers. Lester was able to come out of a 20-year slump to realize it. Do you appreciate the beauty around you?