American Beauty (film)

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American Beauty
Image:American-beauty-mov-poster.jpg
Directed by Sam Mendes
Produced by Bruce Cohen
Dan Jinks
Written by Alan Ball
Starring Kevin Spacey
Annette Bening
Thora Birch
Wes Bentley
Mena Suvari
Chris Cooper
Peter Gallagher
Allison Janney
Music by Thomas Newman
Cinematography Conrad L. Hall
Editing by Tariq Anwar
Christopher Greenbury
Distributed by DreamWorks
Release date(s) Image:Flag of the United States.svg September 8, 1999 (première)
Image:Flag of the United States.svg September 15, 1999 (limited release)
Image:Flag of the United States.svg October 1, 1999 (wide release)
Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg February 4, 2000 (wide release)
Image:Flag of Australia.svg February 4, 2000 (wide release)
Running time 122 min.
Country Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
Language English
Budget $15,000,000 (estimated)[1]
Gross revenue $356,296,601
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

American Beauty is a 1999 Comedy/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 feature film debuts 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

[edit] Plot summary

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Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot.

Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a 42-year-old man living in the suburbs, and working a boring job in advertising. His wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is an ambitious realtor; his rebellious and confused daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is an average teenager, unhappy with her physical appearance and harboring resentment for her father because of the lack of attention he shows her.

Dissatisfied with his nondescript 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 regimen.

Meanwhile, Colonel Frank Fitts, USMC (Chris Cooper), his emotionally-detached wife Barbara (Allison Janney), and their introspective, drug-dealing son Ricky (Wes Bentley) move next door to the Burnhams. Frank is militaristic, conservative, and openly anti-gay. Jane begins to notice Ricky videotaping her through her bedroom window, which secretly flatters her.

Carolyn begins an extramarital affair with rival realtor Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher), whom she has admired for some time, and at his recommendation decides to begin relieving her stress at a shooting range.

Meanwhile, confronted with a newly-installed (and much younger) department boss looking for a reason to get rid of him, rather than desperately trying to save his job, Lester quits instead, revealing his disgust and contempt and successfully blackmailing his boss for an enormous severance package.

Remembering how much he enjoyed his summer job 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 the B-movies Re-Animator and Beastmaster. Lester also begins to purchase $2000 per 1/8th oz G-13 marijuana from Ricky.

Some time later, Lester catches his wife with her lover at the drive-through window of the fast food restaurant where he is employed. Despite Lester's calm reaction, Carolyn's lover breaks off their liaison, fearing financial complications in his own divorce and scandal to his reputation. She angrily drives home with her gun, seemingly with the intention of confronting her husband, believing him to have ruined her life. Lester pages Ricky for marijuana, raising the suspicions of Col. Fitts that the two are involved in a gay 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 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, claiming that he is a prostitute.

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, boring, and that she knows it. Angela is devastated, the implication being that Ricky has exposed her deepest fear; that she suspects she is indeed ordinary, a fate she considers unbearable. 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 gay based on what he had seen earlier. Lester rejects this advance calmly as a misunderstanding, and Fitts leaves, humiliated.

Returning to his family room, Lester finds a vulnerable Angela. He admits his attraction to her, and that he has been working out. He begins to undress her, but she admits that she is a virgin. He cannot bring himself to take her virginity. Conversing with Angela in the kitchen, Lester realizes that he is truly happy. As Angela heads to the bathroom, Lester contemplates over an old photo of his smiling family - unaware that a gun is now 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 narrates over the closing images, recalling the things he loved about his life and family, and reflects on the overwhelming beauty in the world. He assures the viewers that, even though they probably do not understand what he is talking about now, they will someday, at the end of their own lives.

[edit] Cast

[edit] 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.[2] 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.[3] 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 (rather than acted) reactions of shock to Bening and Birch's faces.

[edit] Soundtrack and score

Main articles: American Beauty (soundtrack) and 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 have been rare in motion pictures since 1985, when the publishing rights were purchased by Michael Jackson). 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.

[edit] Reception

Three 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.[4][5]

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.[6]

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.[1]

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Wins

[edit] 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

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Business data for American Beauty from IMDb
  2. ^ Statement made during Alan Ball's Oscar acceptance speech
  3. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/trivia IMDB trivia page for American Beauty
  4. ^ Sragow, Michael. "American BJ", Salon.com, 2000-03-30. Retrieved on 2006-07-16. (English) 
  5. ^ Weinraub, Bernard. "At the Movies", The New York Times, 1999-07-02. Retrieved on 2006-07-05. (English) 
  6. ^ Hoberman, J.. "Boomer Bust", The Village Voice. Retrieved on 2006-07-05. (English) 

[edit] External links

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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
American Beauty


Awards
Preceded by
Shakespeare in Love 		Academy Award for Best Picture
1999 		Succeeded by
Gladiator
Preceded by
Saving Private Ryan 		Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama
1999
Preceded by
Shakespeare in Love 		BAFTA Award for Best Film
1999
v • d • e
Films directed by Sam Mendes
American Beauty (1999) • Road to Perdition (2002) • Jarhead (2005) • Revolutionary Road (2008)
v • d • e
Academy Award for Best Picture: Winners (1981–2000)

1981: Chariots of Fire · 1982: Gandhi · 1983: Terms of Endearment · 1984: Amadeus · 1985: Out of Africa · 1986: Platoon · 1987: The Last Emperor · 1988: Rain Man · 1989: Driving Miss Daisy · 1990: Dances with Wolves · 1991: The Silence of the Lambs · 1992: Unforgiven · 1993: Schindler's List · 1994: Forrest Gump · 1995: Braveheart · 1996: The English Patient · 1997: Titanic · 1998: Shakespeare in Love · 1999: American Beauty · 2000: Gladiator

Complete List · Winners (1927–1940) · Winners (1941–1960) · Winners (1961–1980) · Winners (2001– )

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