American Beauty
Charater and Movie Analysis
The film is a true masterpiece in both content, how this content is delivered to the viewers and how displays American dreams. It surpasses being an informative drama about the American life, and never fails to keep the audience entertained by providing many instances of well-placed humor. The movie contains themes covering many situations relevant to contemporary American life. These include the beauty of life in general, death, self-awareness, power, love, mid-life crises, pedophilia, homophobia, adultery, spouse abuse, child abuse, trends to materialism, and youthfulness. The movies also show the differente versions of the cost to achieve this American dream and how it affects there emotions and self esteem. All of these intertwine to create a cohesive masterpiece of a story representing the American dream. Many of these features are delivered through the main charater Lester Burnham.
The main character changes throughout the course of the film and is probably someone that most people can relate to in some way. At around 40 years old, he is going through a mid-life crisis, which turns out to actually be the end of his life. He has a steady job, a nice house in the suburbs, a wife, and a daughter. However, he doesn’t like his job, has extreme marriage troubles with his wife, and feels depressed and hopeless. “And in a way, I'm dead already... Both my wife and daughter think I'm this gigantic loser, and... they're right.” He ends up changing quite a bit. He gets sexually obsessed with his daughter’s friend Angela, decides to quit his job and get one where he can have “the least possible amount of responsibility”, starts smoking marijuana, starts working out, and decides to not take anymore aggravation from his wife.
In the beginning of the movie, Lester is looking out the window of his house at his wife, and the blinds on the window represent jail cell bars. Even the blocks of text on his...