I'll admit I was taken in at first.  "Aaaww, how sweet!"  I thought when Lester refuses to deflower American Beauty, the virgin Angela.  But I was very uncomfortable leaving the theater after watching American Beauty, the movie.  This got me to thinking -- my worst character flaw.  

From the opening manipulation -- "You want me to kill (your father) for ya?"
"Yeah." -- to the final deception -- a gun-brandishing Carolyn on a murderous mission -- this movie is a lie.  To be sure, it's a beautiful film, well acted, confidently written and directed, and the effects are way cool, but like American Beauty the pasta, this is a product.  Hollywood product.  Too many cooks have put their, ah, spoons into this pot.  The film masquerades as hard-hitting social commentary, sort of a riposte to Lolita or a take on The Graduate, but it fails at every turn.  

Money is unimportant, is one of the messages.  Great, but -- Lester gets a job flipping hamburgers with a financial safety net so huge, it could hold all the employees of a typical burger joint.  (Come to think of it, everybody in this movie is financially secure.)  We see him diffidently prodding at a couple of charred patties -- there's an Oscar-winning performance for ya!  Go watch a fry cook at rush hour sometime and get a look at real working-class romance.  Corporate America is bad, we're told, but McDonald's is not corporate America?  I'm so sure!  Nazis are bad, says American Beauty.  Ouch!  Not afraid to stand alone, these guys.  About time somebody came out against the Holocaust!  

Guns are bad, drugs (at least marijuana) are good, and sex is DIRTY!  (Especially between two people not of the same age.)  In an unintentional irony, Angela appears in a bathtub, covered to her creamy shoulders by floating rose petals, and  tells Lester "I was hoping you'd give me a bath.  I'm very, very dirty."  In ancient Rome, if anything was so filthy it couldn't stand the light of day, it was said to be done "sub rosa" -- under the roses.  In all Lester's fantasies, Angela's private parts gush forth roses -- Lester's mind is so dirty, its contents are literally perpetually "sub rosa."  

The women's characters are beyond the pale.  Carolyn is a bitch-hag from hell, Angela's a whore (Not!  Only a phony!), Janie's way of showing she has a mind is to adore a guy who has one, and Ricky's mom (does she have a name?) obviously shell-shocked after a life of being brutalized by a monster, is admonished by her rat son as a flees the sinking ship, "Take good care of dad, mom."  That is sooo creepy!  Here's a kid who is regularly bloodied by his father's fists, freaks out in military school at 15, spends two years drugged up in an insane asylum and appears at 18 years of age in this story in the role of a creative, sensitive, well-adjusted, financially- independent, dynamic, drug-dealing model kid and love interest for the hero's daughter?  Helooo?  I haven't been beating my kids enough!  

This movie is sooo confused, sad, alienated and hopeless!  It begins with the hero telling us he's going to die.  And what a senseless, stupid, utterly un-redeeming death it turns out to be!  Look at the family scenes, studies in alienation.  Nobody really talks in this movie.  But I'm quibbling.  What really bothered me about American Beauty, the movie, was the paternalism and puritanism.

Kevin Spacey plays the role of Lester Burnham, the hero of the story.  And he really is a hero in the classical tradition.  He deals with a tragic situation by going forth and slaying the monsters in his life:  the corporate hit-man, Brad Dupree, who attempts to fire him; and Carolyn, his controlling, materialistic, bitch-hag wife.  She gets her comeuppance, though.  As he defeats these external foes, he undertakes an internal voyage of self-discovery and growth, triumphs over apathy, cowardice, greed, habit and, finally, sexual desire.  (Thank God!)  He is now as good as dead, and somebody shoots him.  That he bears some responsibility for the mess he's in is not addressed.  Bob Dylan provides the soundtrack, "There must be some way outta here...".  Am I quibbling again?  Anyway, Lester is the hero.  The hero's and other characters' experiences say something about the values of the creative minds behind a film?  Duh...

• Lester never gets laid.  The only sex he has is with himself.  There's a word for that...
• The only red-blooded, screamin', good-time sex is had by the bad guys, the materialistic assholes.  Although the way the film shows their sex is very judgemental and deprecating.  But I quibble.  
• The defining moment of the film is one of sexual self-denial.
• There is the very strong implication that only a young virgin's "soulmate-for-life" is allowed to deflower her (first loves are forever), and that proper young ladies ought to have an unfailing instinct for who that person is.  This is so medieval, cruel and inhuman... yuck!!
• Lester has a heart so chock-full of goodness that he just...can't...do it when he finds out Angie is a virgin.  He can only do it, contemplate doing it so long as he thinks she's a whore.  The film is abundantly explicit on this point.

Well, what does one do with a whore?  One f***s, no?  As long as it was a f***, he could do it, but for love he was unprepared.  Why?  Why is love between a sweet, kind, sensitive, experienced, even enlightened man of 42 and a perceptive, smart, confused and cynical woman of 18 so unthinkable?  Or further, why can't an independently-thinking young woman spurn gropey, fumbling, four-second sex with some inept and likely drunk teenager in favor of a first experience with a relaxed, confident, experienced partner?  Isn't that her choice?  And who is Lester to deny it to her?  Lester is the product of Hollywood, and Hollywood is in the business of pandering.  American Beauty is porn, elaborately rationalized by a puritan message to conform to contemporary standards of "art."  The two long, lingering, salacious chest-shots of the film's babes leave no doubt as to what the film is.  I'm just quibbling about the packaging.

And the dirty old man in the theater is Director Sam Menes, proferring the sweet, sweet lie of American Beauty like a bag of candy while his hand gropes under our clothing.

Oh, and kudos to Chris Cooper for his terrific performance as Col. Frank Fitz.

........Falk Burger 

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Although Alan Ball was already a successful writer for television, there's little doubt that he's hit pay dirt (so to speak) with American Beauty, his first produced feature film.  The movie about a dysfunctional family is reminiscent of Robert Altman's treatment: compelling, shocking, rough and humorous.  Kevin Spacey is outstanding as Lester, a neglected husband in mid-life crisis; Annette Bening is equally well cast as his crazed real-estate-selling, fulfillment-seeking wife Carolyn.  Teenage-angst-ridden daughter Jane, played by young Thora Birch, does her best to avoid them as much as possible except to run interference between her lustful Dad and her best friend (with whom she has nothing in common), Lolita-like Angela, played by  Mena Suvari.  

The catalyst:  new family moves in next door.  Patriarch Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) rules over a wife who barely makes a peep, while seemingly-respectful, drug-dealing teenaged son Ricky (Wes Bentley) makes digital movies of everything, especially Jane.

Enjoy the ricochets with a spouse who normally goes to sleep during films.  Bet ya they stay on the edge of their seat this time!

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Go to DreamWorks/Amazon Official Website 
for American Beauty

Maybe Lester didn't have sex with the young girl because he saw the fear behind her eyes.  If you look closely at her you can see that she was probably extremely uncomfortable, she wouldn't have told him it was her first time if she wasn't.  He could see that in her and didn't want to make her unhappy because he was beginning to understand that the meaning of life is happiness.  When he dies he tells us the things that stick out in his memory, they are things that don't seem very important, but they are.  The most important things in life are the things that we sometimes overlook.  That is another theme of the movie, love of simple existences.  The floating bag scene I think was the most important one because it was something simple.  Also, the air can't be seen, but it moves the bag around wherever it wants to.  This portrays God in a good light, showing that God isn't something that is ordered, God is chaotic.  The movies tells us to let God flow through us freely so that we are just plastic bags in the wind.  People constantly try to box God up in certain religions, yet they are only interpretations.  God can't be shoved in the corner.  This part of the movie really spoke to me because I have never been a follower of religion, but the movie tells that God isn't a religion, God is God, and is behind everything that is.  Once everyone in the movie follows the wind, they become much happier, the only character who crawls back into his box is Ricky's dad, who has been indoctrinated into a structured society too long and he can't get out.  He can't take the fact that he is gay and doesn't want anyone else to know so he releases
his frustration on the only man who knows of his homosexuality.  Did you also notice that the only normal people in the movie are two gay guys?  This shows the value of following your heart without worrying about
social constraints.  Carolyn symbolizes the depression that comes along with trying to appear successful.  Nobody wants to buy her fake American dream, so when she is not successful in selling it, she crawls into the
house, shuts the doors and blinds and cries her heart out.  I don't think she was portrayed to be a bad person, and nobody in the movie is since the theme is everything is beautiful.  She just shows us the psychological dysfunction that can happen if we don't do what we want. She wanted to have a good marriage with Lester, but sometimes things don't happen the way we want them to in life, therefore we must fid some sort of release.  She releases herself with having sex with another man.  She doesn't kill Lester at the end because she knows it's unnecessary.  Killing him would go against her wishes of obtaining a normal life.  She also discovers that doing things against the inner most self are pointless.  That is my take on the movie.  Once again I thoroughly
enjoyed learning a different perspective of the film.  Are there any other good movies that you would recommend, that have a deep theme to them?  Write me back and tell me what you think.  Thanx

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A Chef in Love

PG-13 - Sony Pictures Classics
French/Georgian/Russian,
but good subtitles you can read

Les mille et une recettes du cuisinier amoureux
1001 retsept iz menyu vlyublyonnogo povara

Based on some true events, this Academy-Award nominated film tells the story of a teddy-bear of a French chef, Pascal Ichac (Pierre Richard), who visits Georgia around 1920. He falls in love with a beautiful woman chronologically younger than himself, Cecilia (Nino Kirtadze), who shares his lusty appetite for fine food and romance. As they travel together, Pascal and Cecilia are enticed into a country inn by promises of fresh pork (squealing pig in the background). However, what they are served more closely resembles rubber. Pascal sneaks away, and as potential customers are given the pitch, he discovers the pig being poked by the innkeepers. Quickly bidding Cecilia to join him, they rescue the pig and drive off. A handsome young man from the inn, Zigmund Gogoladze (Teimour Kahmhadze) grabs a weapon and charges off in pursuit.

Later, Pascal's finely-developed sense of smell alerts him to a bomb underneath the President's chair at the opera; he is rewarded when the President backs him so that he can open a restaurant, the Eldorado, where he and his staff prepare an enticing array of concoctions for some years. However, when the communists take over, Pascal's world is at first threatened and then destroyed, as the Red Army occupies his restaurant and kicks him upstairs to the attic. Zigmund (the pig shooter) shows up as an officer, and Cecilia agrees to marry him in order to save Pascal's life.

The story is told through flashbacks as a contemporary art curator, Anton (played by Jean-Yves Gautier and Ramaz Tchkhikvadze), is beckoned by a worldly older woman (Micheline Presle) to stay at her home and read letters which she says have some relevance to his life. She is Pascal Ichac's niece, and since Anton has fond memories of his mother's devotion to "1001 Recipes of a Chef in Love," he agrees. As the story unfolds he discovers the secret of his own identity.

Harrison Ford

Gary Oldman
Glenn Close
Wendy Crewson
Liesel Matthews
Paul Guilfoyle
Xander Berkeley
Elya Baskin
William H. Macy
Jurgen Prochnow
Dean Stockwell
Levani Outchaneichvili
Donna Bullock
David Vadim

Directed by Wolfgang

The visuals are absolutely splendid -- filmed on location in Russia in opulent palaces, the costuming and the sets are mouthwateringly beautiful. The cinematography is also excellent. These are reasons enough to make attending the film a worthwhile venture. The sound track is a treat - Tchaikovsky's music is used lavishly (although it was rather disconcerting to hear Swan Lake at the ball).

Vronsky continues to pursue Anna, and when you see them lunching together in a private room you know that she has agreed to capitulate. Vronsky takes a final sip of wine, wipes his mouth, goes to Anna's side of the table, unbuttons her blouse, appears to bite her chest, and puts his hand up her leg. Considering Vronsky has not even kissed Anna up to this point, this scene seemed a little improbable. Where was the romance, the seduction? Maybe screenwriter Barnard Rose (who also directed) was trying to hurry things along - after all, 108 minutes of film isn't much when you consider the massive size of Tolstoy's novel.

Husband Karenin catches on pretty quickly, and when Anna affirms not only that his suspicions are correct but that she is pregnant, he gives her an ultimatum: she can stay, and even keep the baby, if she will behave as a good wife. Presently she miscarries and Karenin comes home to find her in bed (blood everywhere) and a distraught Vronsky sitting in a nearby chair. Anna pleads for Karenin's forgiveness, which he grants. Anna's state of self-flagellation doesn't last long, however, and Vronsky carries her away.

After a brief interlude in the country, Vronsky decides that they must return to the city where he can do work for which he is suited. Prevented from seeing her son and confined to an apartment (a very opulent one), Anna leads a life of isolation, becoming increasingly addicted to opiate (prescribed for pain following the miscarriage), while Vronsky goes to the opera with his mother and her attractive companion. Driven to despair, she throws herself under a train and Vronsky takes himself off to war.

The secondary plot involves the sensitive and disillusioned Levin (Alfred Molina), who leaves the city to work the fields of his country estate. He finds peace there, wielding a scythe next to the peasants in what is one of the most beautiful scenes in the movie. Upon his return to the city Levin finds love with Vronsky's rejected mistress Kitty who has gone through an epiphany of her own.

This interpretation of the great novel left me caring more for the subplot, perhaps because the characters seem more intelligent. Instead of feeling sorry for Anna, one pities her for her stupidity.

Produced by Bruce Davey
Warner Bros.

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements and some sensuality/nudity

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