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thekiyote's avatar

Man, I can't believe I'm the only person here, but as someone who just rewatched this movie, I disagree, at least on your main point.

I think you're overly focused on Angela being the cause of Lester's change. I think that Lester's major point of change wasn't her, but Ricky, when Lester smoked weed with him behind the banquet. It was in that moment, Lester realized that he was embracing all the wrong things in his life, and went back to the last time he felt like he was legitimately his authentic self, which was when he was in high school/college. He decided to COMPLETELY live his life in that way, without regards for any of the consequences.

The problem with that was that it IS inappropriate for a 40-ish man to live like he's in high school. From that perspective, Angela was a symptom, not the cause, or his crisis. But, in a large way, this movie was a coming-of-age for a mid-life crisis, and for the majority of the film, he was a complete ass, but he makes progress throughout the film, and his almost having sex with Angela was what finally woke him up, both allowing him to embrace both what made him authentic, as well as the period of life he was in, instead of just what he wanted to be. In those last moments of the film, he honestly felt like a dad, both for Angela and Jane. On top of that, he also seemed like he understood how his wife wanted to grow, but that was less flushed out than his relationship with Jane.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot problematic with the film, especially with how it sexualized teens. If the film were made today, it would probably have a much larger sleaze factor, but judging it compared to its contemporaries, I think the film was remarkably realistic and progressive with its portrayal of teens who were faking their sexual prowess, as well as Lester's recognizing that taking advantage of that as morally wrong. And, in a lot of ways, the film called Lester out on it, both via Jane and his wife.

Just my thoughts, having just finished the movie and looking for online analysises of it xD

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Dan's avatar
Dec 24Edited

You're trying to analyze an arty movie as if it's a solid mainstream sort of effort. I reflect that this is a movie that pretends to be something other than what it is. A great deal of what you take it to be strikes me as what it is pretending to be, superficially. Honestly I think you're rather smug in your analysis of the shot list as being 'He’s not thinking cinematically', I don't want to garble my point that I do simply disagree. This is a highly sophisticated movie, that operates on multiple levels. What is interesting about the movie is not any sort of 'message', at all -- it's not a 'message' movie.

For example, the title is 'American Beauty' and the message therefore is.. the title doesn't, though, actually mean much of anything. I realize the impression is 'it's so didactic', which isn't always a bad thing maybe, but isn't the thing here. One might figure quickly that 'the deck is so clearly stacked to make all these points', but that's only the first approximation of what the movie is up to, actually.

This movie did $350,000,000 ticket sales, and with confidence my guess is that the producers probably figured that $30,000,000 seemed optimistic. You have a speculation as to why the movie is such a big hit, of course -- something about 'hegemony', you lost me. I admit I simply think the word sounds dumb, you honestly lost me here.

You say 'Mrs. Fitts’ entire reason for being so dazed and confused is that her husband won’t put out.' Not true, I think -- no reason is given. It would be difficult for me to skip past the straightforward possibility here of dementia or Alzheimer’s. She forgot that her son doesn’t eat bacon. Telling him to wear a raincoat when he already had one on. Also, with a hypocritical, abusive, Marine-minded husband, there is more to consider than 'her husband won’t put out', which seems to be a reference to how her husband turns out to be a closeted homosexual, but skips right past how that wouldn't actually be directly an explanation of why her existence is ghostly and subservient.

Of course the colonel appears to have very strong ideals what it means to be a man and raises his son to believe in those same ideals -- cannot leave the military life behind. Strive -- to the point of break -- for perfection.

So, her existence -- I see a concept here of 'There is nothing ‘wrong’ with her, per se'. Looks like deep, mental scars, looks psychotically depressed. To me the image here is ambiguous, has something faded away? There is a contrast between her and other characters, like Carolyn is over ambitious. Angela has this fear of ultimately being ordinary. I would say that taking this or that idea, this or that character, you might see something fairly straightforward, not too interesting, but the juxtapositions make it interesting. A trash bag that is 'beautiful'? Not, in itself, so very interesting to me, but put it next to the girl who repeatedly says that nothing is worse than being ordinary. Angela is beautiful. The movie is about the internal conflict, such as 'homosexual and homophobic at the same time', which is not in itself an interesting idea, but more abstractly, we have a chance to compare and contrast these characters. What is 'disturbing' or 'uncomfortable' or just 'confusing' is where you find what pulls the movie together, which of course, is a movie that does grab almost everyone.

You pick up on a 'message' here, about how damaging and unhealthy suppressed sexual desires can be. But hold on, because also something forces people like Angela to boast of having had sex with many. She does not accept herself. All the characters pretty much feel the same, that "beauty" and "perfection" are the same thing. And this is true.

You could see the movie, apply yourself to parsing the 'message', and say 'this pretentious high school kid is some kind of secret emotional genius and has the whole world figured out'. Gimme a break...

Thus, how fast it became "hip" to crap all over this movie. I find it rather boring that people act like they are above it now. I'll save you the trouble if this is your reply: 'I've been sh*tting on this movie since it was released.' ;)

The way this story is weaved together is magnificent.

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