"Sometimes the world has so much beauty that I can't seem to bear it, my heart... Almost collapsed. ” - "American Beauty"
American Beauty is director Sam Mendes' first solo film, which won the Best Picture Award at the 72nd Academy Awards. Sam Mendes directed many classic films, such as the Lehman Brothers Trilogy, the 007 series of 007: The GreatEstablish and 007: The Ghost Party, and the one-shot "1917" and so on.
Released in 1999, "American Beauty" is a literary drama film, but the set, music, and plot setting are very attractive. The film is very exquisite, every frame is beautiful, after 20 years, the film still has a vivid vitality, is a classic of film aesthetics.
The film revolves around an ordinary Middle-class American family, showing love, lust and perverted personality through an unconventional perspective, telling the various bottomless loneliness of life in a calm tone, exposing the estrangement and alienation between people.
leicester
Leicester, who is already middle-aged, is an indispensable screw in the company, and is disliked by his wife and daughter at home. Labeled a "loser," he couldn't lift his head anywhere, he was depressed all day, had no passion for life, and became a soulless walking dead.
Men's frustration probably starts with not being recognized.
His wife Caroline is a strong woman who works as a real estate agent, in order to earn more money and give her daughter a better life, she has suffered all the grievances, even if her heart is about to collapse, she also smiles again after slapping herself to face life.
Caroline looked down on Leicester, and Lester knew it. Since then, their marriage has survived in name only.
Leo Tolstoy famously said in Anna Karenina, "Happy families are all similar, unhappy families are different".
In fact, unhappy marriages are mostly similar. They lost their passion and lust for each other, lying in the same bed, physically inaccessible to each other; going out, curbing the nausea in their hearts, pretending to be affectionate; a family of three eating, always playing the same music, no one has anything to say. Being in a "masquerade marriage" makes everyone breathless.
Until Slater meets Angela, their peaceful and stagnant married life ripples.
Lester and Caroline have an underage daughter named Jane, and Angela is Jane's girlfriend.
Angela (left) and Jane (right)
At a school event, Jane co-starred with Angela on a dance show, and Leicester, who was sitting in the stands, was thrilled by the beautiful and sexy Angela on the stage. At that moment, there was only Angela in his eyes, and fantasies about Angela began to play out in his mind.
Lester was hopelessly caught up in his lust for Angela. People can't hide hatred in their eyes, nor can they hide love and fire, and everything is clearly seen by Jane.
Jane is extremely disappointed in her inferior father Lester, and bluntly says "disgusting" about her father's infatuation with her girlfriend, and in her heart, she actually hopes to get more attention and recognition from her father.
The most bloody thing is always life.
Angela
Angela, who claims to be a lot of readers and often talks about men and women, has some heart for Lester, saying in front of Jane that Lester is cute and sexy. In the darkness, the two people with a huge difference in generation and age are attracted to each other.
Knowing that Angela likes muscle men, Lester begins to work out and deliberately approaches Angela. One night, he masturbated as Angela, and after being discovered by his wife, Caroline, the two had a big fight.
A woman's despair is the accumulation of small things.
Money, love and sex, nothing can count on him, Caroline is dead set on Lester, and the marriage is crumbling. Caroline no longer pinned her hopes on Lester.
At the same time, Caroline fell into a crazy fascination and admiration for the real estate agent Buddy, and then she threw herself into Buddy's arms, looking like a second youth.
Lester and Caroline each fell in love with their own twilight, and their daughter Jane, despite Angela's obstruction, fell in love with Ricky, a perverted boy who secretly photographed her at the neighbor's house. The boy was drugged and sent to an insane asylum for two years, with a macho military dad and a forgetful mom.
Angela: "Jane, he's a freak. ” Jane: "Me too!" We're all freaks and can never be like you. You're perfect and you'll never be a freak. ”
Richie
Ricky loves all things beautiful, plastic bags flying in the air, female tramps who freeze to death on the side of the road, he sees the powerful beauty of life from behind ordinary life, all things have life.
Jane was not loved since childhood, did not get the attention of her parents, only in the eyes of Ricky with the camera, she was incredibly beautiful.
And the perverted boy who let others avoid him made Jane let go of her guard and was willing to follow him to the end of the world.
Love is love, it is not about identity, it is not about gossip, it is not about everything external.
simple
However, the peaceful days did not last long. Lester accidentally breaks Karoline and Buddy's private affair, Buddy chooses to leave Caroline for his own reputation, and Lester no longer obeys Caroline's wishes and begins to live as he pleases.
Fed up with a messy life, fed up with a useless husband, Caroline killed Leicester.
Jane and Angela quarrel over Lester, and Jane says to Ricky that she wants someone to end her father's sad life.
Lester lived as a thorn in the eye of his family, and his failure alone was enough to make his family lose face, and even his wife and daughter had a murderous heart for him.
Fortunately, he still has Angela, the last light of his life, his whole life, ignored, rejected, snubbed, and only Angela will ask him "Are you happy?" ”
The lust between the middle-aged uncle and the little Lori begins with attraction and ends with the soul.
Slater is the big boy full of anger in front of Angela, and the sexy girl who is well-behaved and pompous only reveals her inner inferiority and timidity and fear in front of Slater.
Love is to go into each other's hearts and embrace each other's souls.
But when Lester took off Angela's pants and Angela trembled, he realized that this beautiful object who was willing to dedicate herself to him was actually a virgin.
People never know what kind of bloody rain and wind are under other people's lives, and it is even more difficult for a person to suppress his own inner storm.
Ricky's father was Colonel Fitz, and his world collapsed when he discovered that Ricky was both deadly drug-addicted and possibly engaged in homosexual sex trafficking. Throughout his life, Colonel Fitz defended his absolute authority at home by force, and his greatest secret was to conceal his homosexuality and raise his son to be a legitimate, true man.
When the "comrade" misunderstood, he angrily beat Ricky again, and then threw him out of the house.
The beloved only son was far away from him, and Colonel Fitz was so lonely and helpless. He let go of his arrogance and decency, and went to Leicester to the extreme, thinking that Lester was gay like himself, but was denied and rejected by Lester.
Colonel Fitz
It was the biggest mistake of his life, exposing his weaknesses, being provoked again and again, and he made the final impulsive decision in his heart.
Before the gunshots rang out, Lester was still looking at old pictures of him, Caroline, and Jane from a long time ago, when the family of three was laughing so happily. But the old days are gone, and there will be no chance to do it again.
Lester, who had fallen into a pool of blood, was still smiling, relieved, peaceful, and seeing through.
People often think that ordinary life is lifeless, a pool of stagnant water, but they do not know that the true meaning of life is in the ordinary.
After Lester's death, his daughter Jane was as lost as she was shocked, and his wife, Caroline, wept bitterly as shed as she hugged his clothes.
Sometimes the people closest to you are the stranger, not because they don't love, but because they don't know how to love, they don't know how to express, they don't know how to break the deadlock. So the cold war, so alienated, so quarrelsome, trying to make the other side care more about themselves.
"I guess I should be angry when I die, but the world is so beautiful, I shouldn't be angry all the time, sometimes I can't bear it after reading it once, my heart is like a balloon full of balloons that will explode at any time, and then I remember to relax, don't keep trying to hold on, all the beauty washes me like rain, let me be full of gratitude for my humble stupid life, in every moment, you must not know what I am talking about, but I am sure, don't worry, one day you will understand..."
The mastery of "American Beauty" lies in the calm narration of life and death, the calm portrayal of human loneliness, and the mournful and unserious singing of the grandeur of life.
The protagonist of the film is not just a middle-aged man Lester, without any one, the movie is incomplete. And it is just a few simple characters, but the movie is strung together and extended, becoming the epitome of different types of people.
In just two hours, "American Beauty" vividly interprets the survival crisis of middle-aged people, the rebellion of youth, the repression in marriage, the suppression of personal will, and sexual orientation.
The film does not preach from the moral high point, nor does it complain bitterly, under the heart-wrenching music, it is the hopelessness of mourning that is greater than the death of the heart, and it is an infinite space that attracts people's thinking.
Sam Mendes
"American Beauty" has few strokes and not much dialogue, but it has written a hundred forms of life, and few movies can be as comprehensive and natural as "American Beauty". Although this is Sam Mendes' screen Virgo, her talent and talent is still amazing.
Whether it is from filmmaking or contemplating the theme of life, "American Beauty" is a well-deserved good movie in the true sense.
Depression, loneliness, pain, sadness... But there is beauty. Behind the seemingly perverted souls is the fragility of seeking recognition and not being able to do so.
Everyone wants to live the best appearance in the hearts of the people they care about, but they backfire and can't get the response they want, and finally they close their own hearts and become unrecognizable.
Love is acceptance, appreciation, listening, believing, but at the very least, be yourself first. Life is only once, living in the eyes of others, too tired. Perhaps only by truly breaking away from the shackles of the world and being the truest version of yourself can we attain final liberation.
Life is so difficult, but it is so beautiful, so beautiful that it is suffocating, so that even if people have a heavy burden, they must use all their strength to move forward...
*About the Author: Clouds in the Air, a woman who combines love and loneliness, talks to herself between dreams and reality.