'American Beauty' is the Quint Essential American Film

In my lifetime, I've seen many films; but none have impacted quite like Sam Mendes' film "American Beauty". Being present in a class that is teaching the influences of American films, I thought appropriate to inform the class of this title. "American Beauty" was Directed by Sam Mended and released in 1999. The film went on to receive critical praise and a total of 8 Oscar nominations and 5 Oscar wins. Not too bad, right? Anyways, none of that means anything because you may not have seen the movie yet and I didn't tell you the categories for the nominations. Evil me (^_^) You can find all that information on IMDB. "American Beauty" stars a phenomenal cast including: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Chris Cooper, Wes Bentley, Thora Birch and Mena Suvari.

The way we see the people around us and how we express ourselves towards them have always been the complete opposites. Most people, whenever they meet for the first time, instantly begin to judge and surmise one another into different social stigmas and categories. As we go through life very few of us are able to express ourselves openly and we hide are true feeling and emotions as best as we possibly can in order to seem normal to everyone around us. In "American Beauty" Lester and Carolyn Burnham, along with their daughter Janey are always the portrait of an ideal family; on the outside. They have the prefect house, in the perfect neighborhood, with the perfect garden and the perfect neighbors. On the inside however, they're anything but perfect.

Together they're all sinking deeper into this quicksand-like state of depression. The more they struggle against it, the faster they close in on a complete breakdown. It's difficult to describe all the idiosyncrasies present in the plot of "American Beauty" but I'll provide the basics. Lester is in his early forties and he works as an Executive Officer for an Advertising Firm. Like most people, Lester absolutely despises his job. His wife Carolyn is an ambitious realtor who feels that she is unsuccessful at fulfilling her potential. She feels strained at her job due to the success of her rival competitor Buddy Kane. Their daughter Jane has her own self-esteem issues to deal with. Together all three of the Burnhams are seeking to revitalize their lives in some way. Janey just wants to be accepted by someone for who she is, Lester is only looking to recapture that spark that would make him feel young again, and Carolyn only wants to feel that she is appreciated. 

American culture teaches us that we need to always be successful and that in order to be happy we need to have good jobs and be able to afford all the nice things we want in life. Society says that normal are the people who always stick to the staus quoe and who never step outside of the lines. On the outside we all try to appear normal, when on the inside we are everything but. There comes a point though that being normal is worse for us than cancer. Learning to accept people for who they are and living our lives in harm ony with one another. That's how we truly live and how we begin to see the glory. "American Beauty" is about many different things and it approaches those topics from several angles. In the end though, its message is that life is short and that we can't focus on the negative things in our lives or keep to social norms all the time. If we do, we'll miss out on all the beauty in the world and life will pass us by. If we are to refocus our lives, then the first thing we need to do is change.