"American Beauty" is the first movie of the director Sam Mendes. It tells the story of a middle-class family in the suburb area. Lester, who is a middle-aged man with boring life, is a standard middle class in America. Carolyn Burnham is his wife, who is a real estate agent. Moreover, his wife Carolyn is very cold and ambitious. Their daughter is Jenny, who is the cheerleader in her school. Additionally, she is mature and complicated. What is strange is that Jenny's father is interested in Jenny’s classmates, whose name is Angela. Angela is very sexy. In order to get Jenny's classmate, who is sexy Angela, Lester is super nice to his daughter with his own purpose. Being with sexy Angela, Lester, who is facing middle-age crisis, finds that he is super happy about being with Angela.
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The encounter with Angela awakens the potential vitality and energy of Lester's inner heart. Lester’s energy recovers when he meets with Angela. He starts to be in dilemma . If he returns to be 18 year-old young boy, he will definitely continue to chase Angela. Moreover, he will not hesitate to build his boy, take drugs, and quit his job to go to the restaurant to work like a middle school student, like other teenager boys. However, he is not. He is a middle-age man already and he has a family. In the film, the director Sam Mendes applies a realistic approach and points into the subjective perspective to the character's daily life.
Although this film is his first movie, he has a talent to deal with these issues. The film comfortably shows the scenes of everyday life about their family and further explores the inner heart of each character. The emotions and entanglements shown in the story are very realistic. Also, they are full of absurd and black humor. I have watched this movie more than three times. Every time I watched this film again, I find more details and hints that I missed. These details reveal the true humanity behind the characters. It is not difficult to conclude that the depiction of this film is the epitome of American families at that time, which is 1990s.
At the same time, the key topic is also a metaphor for the life of the American soul. Through the anatomy and investigation of the middle-aged crisis through this movie, the director Sam Mendes fully demonstrates the spiritual crisis facing Americans at 1990s. This movie is totally different from Hollywood style movie. There are no idealism and heorism in this movie. It detailedly depicts the middle-age crisis in American society in 1990s. The meticulous display of protagonists’ hidden inner world brings tremendous shocks and profound reflection to the audience. Under the director Sam Mendes's classic framework, it explores a range of interesting ideas and creates unique aesthetics. This is really a great movie for those, who are interesting in American society.
Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/14-american-beauty?language=en-US
Critic: AAA
영화: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/14-american-beauty?language=ko-KR
별점: AAA