Movie | "American Beauty": The Life and Death Love of a Middle-Aged Man

My name is Lester Burnham, I'm 42 years old, and within a year I'll be dead.

This is the first line of the male protagonist of the movie "American Beauty" when he appears. In this sentence, there is an elusive, almost nihilistic indifference. This humble, cowardly, lewd, mediocre middle-aged man is dispensable in the workplace and family, and in the eyes of all people ,—— young company manager, inexplicable neighbor, rough wife and even underage daughter. For the world, it is not so much that he is insignificant as that he never existed. When his wife is at odds with a successful person, and he can only live on masturbation and sexual fantasies, he cannot accept sympathy because he does not exist. In weighing the humiliations with his scales, He is infinitely lighter because he does not exist. Such a person, even life can not humiliate him, because he does not exist. And he once hovered on the edge of existence, that is, when he fell in love with his daughter's classmate, he was shot and killed. This is a story of despair, and its degree of despair is comparable to the story of Xiang Lin's sister-in-law. This story tells us: Burnham cannot exist.

I thought that I should find a vague-looking person to play this role. If you can't find it, put foul-smelling flesh-colored stockings on the actor's head. But that seems too absurd. But the question doesn't seem to be that important either, and what matters is a Kierkegaard-esque question: Guilty, or innocent? If Xiang Lin is innocent, what about Burnham?

If Bernham were asked how he had become like this, he would have felt confused, did not know where to start, and in severe cases would even sweat on his forehead, his hands and feet cold, and panic like a bird in a cage. But I suspect that Burnham, who loved and did not, would react differently after love, and that before that, he would most likely make a series of frictional notes in a fluttering tone.

In his gray life, that attempted, cursed love by all was a bright color. The bright color was so brilliant that it was enough to illuminate his life. Lived, loved. Living is only half of life, and the other half is love.

If you were me, you would not be able to stand yourself.

I couldn't stand myself for a long time.

In marriage, a woman is often seen as the party making sacrifices and devotion, even to the woman herself, especially when she thinks she loves the other person more. This is a form of submission. As compensation, a desire for control grows in her heart, at a lower level in trying to control the other party's economy and behavior, if there is the most basic trust in this regard, then it will go to a higher level, that is, the control of the other party's future, requiring the other party to become what they demand according to their own expectations. Correspondingly, the right to judge is naturally out of the question. A web of control-judgment is formed. Formal submission, then, is exchanged for substantive submission, but in reverse.

Initial control carries the sweetness of love, while submission is considered a symbol of love. At this point the man becomes the party of resistance. The scale of marriage depends on the method and intensity of rebellion. And the weird thing is that everything turns to the opposite. As the initial stages passed, as time passed, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between the renunciation of defiance and the renunciation of family responsibilities, and eventually he had to give up the ego partially in order to maintain the illusion of peace. However, the woman is awake, and out of her natural sensitivity to time, she first loses patience in the waiting, and then feels deceived. For this she was often angry, saying the worst things to him, belittling good men and belittling everything that had to do with him.

What women face at this point is a dilemma: if what she says is true, it means that the marriage is not worth continuing; if it is false, it means that she is abusing her right to judge, and this is unfair to men.

Many years have passed and they have finally fallen into a state of complete inability to communicate because everything is premised on another and no one is right in everything. No matter how perfect the marriage, even if it was once blessed by all, this movement has always existed.

However, is Burnham innocent? No.

He was hypocritical from the beginning. He tried to be frank, but failed. He was a patient, and he hid it. His illness was fear: fear of all men.

No one knows why he is afraid, but one can tell the fear from his actions. In the presence of his wife and daughter, he was a noncommittal, who knew that her daughter looked down on him, scolding him and cursing him behind his back with the most ugly words. In front of his younger superiors, he pretended to be indifferent and hid his fears with indifference.

There is something indestructible in every human being,—— not even time and death. Even if it is burned to ashes, the fear is still there, like a solid piece of ice.

Because of fear, he stayed where he was, allowing life to float and sink. But Caroline, his wife, was tired and tired. For her, cheating wasn't revenge on Burnham, because the latter wasn't worthy of revenge, so there was no need for any apologies. Even Burnham could only agree.

Perhaps in his heart, Burnham had another expectation of himself, an expectation based on self-knowledge. No matter how great the deviation between this expectation and reality, no matter how small the former becomes under the squeeze of the latter, as long as it does not disappear, then one day people may hear him say to himself: "I don't want to deceive myself." That's outrageous. I've been shameless, but I couldn't have been more shameless. "Then he will die as if it did not exist. That was the best ending. Because he was a complete mistake.

I need a father who can be my role model, not a troubled boy who can be seen in shorts every time I bring my girlfriend home from school. As if then he would have had some chance, it was pitiful, and someone should have killed him and got rid of his pain.

Angela's curse revealed a certain warmth, a warmth that must have existed before, but then disappeared irretrievably. Although for this disappearance, no one in the play can pat their chests and say that they are innocent, just like no one has the right to take a stone to beat a prostitute. But this at least suggests that the story may have a different ending.

——end——