American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes, is a movie packed full of surprises and drama. It centers around the interactions of six characters, but essentially the interactions of a father and daughter, Lester and Jane, with each other and others in their lives. Lester (played by Kevin Spacey) is the father of Jane (played by Thora Birch) and wife of Carolyn (played by Annette Bening). It is obvious that their family is falling apart along with other things in their separate lives, but to the outside world their world seems perfectly fine. Their family interactions inside the home are impersonal and simply not what family relations should be. Other characters include: Ricky (Jane’s boyfriend, played by Wes Bentley), Angela (Jane’s best friend, played by Mena Suvari), Carolyn (as mentioned above), and Col. Frank Fitts (Ricky’ father, played by Chris Cooper). It showed how the downfall of one man’s life (Lester) could turn everyone else’s around in either good or bad ways.
There are many factors that play into a movie being considered “good,” specifically a drama. American Beauty is a drama that keeps you on your toes and keeps you guessing. It is focused on the microcosm of the lives of the Burnham family and the people surrounding their lives. There are several separate interactions between characters and they keep the friction of drama going in the movie. The different exchanges of tense contact from character to character keeps you thinking and doesn’t leave the viewer bored. This is a very thought provoking film and can easily strike and emotional chord in any viewer. A particularly important emotion that a drama must include is sadness and anger. The film takes place over a period of time of about a two to three months; this allows for the plot to strongly develop and for all storylines to emerge. At the same time, American Beauty is not a long film in watching length. It is 122 minutes long, which may seem like a long movie, but it definitely doesn’t drag and each aspect of the story unfolds throughout the movie. Another aspect of a drama that is essential to its status on being measured as good or not is the music that accompanies the emotions that the film is trying to convey or trigger. Poetic justice is obviously present in this movie, especially towards the end of the film. Betrayal, murder, secrets, and passion are all embodied in this movie. That spells drama. American Beauty is a good drama, all things considered. It contains suspense, surprise, emotion, passion, sadness, anger, climax, and so much more as mentioned above. All these components and factors allow for a drama to unfold and a viewer to be captivated.
There is plenty of friction between characters in this film. Lester has tension and conflict with his wife (Carolyn), his daughter (Jane), and eventually Col. Frank Fitts. He also interacts with Ricky, but their relationship in the movie is far from tense. They befriended each other through the use of marijuana and the fact that Ricky was dating Jane. This led to the interaction between Lester and Col. Frank Fitts, where at the end of the movie Frank developed the impression that Lester and his son, Ricky, were in a romantic/ sexual relationship with one another. Lester and Carolyn were involved in a marriage on the rocks. They argued constantly but pretended everything was okay, especially when given the exposure to the outside world. There was no lubricating factor in their happiness; essentially there was no happiness in their marriage. It was all a façade to make things seem much better than they actually were. This fundamentally leads to the affair that Carolyn has with Buddy Kane (played by Peter Gallagher), and the affair essentially gives rise to small bouts of tension in parts of the film between Buddy and Lester. Jane and Lester’s relationship isn’t so much tense as much as it is just simply dwindling. They both see it happening; Lester even mentions it as a narrator in the beginning of the film. This is an important factor in the film because I feel that it has more significance as relating to how everything else in Lester’s life fell apart as well, and it was embodied in how he and his daughter’s relationship was faded and tattered. Lester also had a very strange relationship with Angela, Jane’s best friend. He had a strange sexual intrigue with her, which was also provoked by Angela. There was apparent sexual tension between these to characters. This sexual tension was seen by Jane and it created a lot of hostility between herself and Angela, not to mention herself and her father. These are all the dramatic interactions of Lester Burnham, the main character. They all interconnect somehow and lead up to the epiphany moment of the movie.
The climax of the movie is a very good aspect of American Beauty because it is unexpected and unanticipated. Lester Burnham ends up being murdered, but it is not until the very end that you realize Col. Frank Fitts committed the murder because it was revealed that Fitts is a homosexual when he tries to kiss Lester. Fitts apparently could not handle the fact that his secret had been let out, and he had to eliminate this potential liaison between his dirty secret and the public. This was a surprise because he would beat and scream at Ricky for being gay, though Fitt’s suspicions were untrue.
Betrayal is littered throughout this film, betrayal of a husband, of a daughter, of a friend, of a neighbor. Infidelity was an obvious betrayal in the movie, where Carolyn cheats on Lester (as mentioned above). Lester betrayed his daughter in the fact that he would essentially choose her friend over her and simply for the sake of lust. Jane was betrayed by Angela because Angela was too selfish to realize what it was to be a good friend. Col. Frank Fitts betrayed Lester by murdering him. Frank Fitts also betrayed himself by living a lie that would essentially lead to his downfall in character and moral judgment. There are several aspects of betrayal obviously scattered in and about the storyline of American Beauty.
The end of the film, being the climax, displays the poetic justice in the whole scheme of the movie. After Lester was murdered by who we thought was Carolyn, we see her apparent distress and aguish over the loss of her husband despite her infidelity and nagging. She didn’t know what she had until it was gone and too late to get back. She leaned into his closet, almost like a collapse, and clung to his clothes and wept after the discovery of her husband’s dead body, hunched over the dining room table. She wanted back what she couldn’t have anymore, and took for granted what she thought she didn’t want, or need. This was the most impacting aspect of the poetic justice contained in this movie. It stirred my emotions, watching Carolyn’s reaction, and this demonstrates what drama should embody.
Most of the other characters were shown simply hearing the gunshot but weren’t really shown in the reaction state of the murder. It briefly showed Ricky and Jane as they walked into the kitchen, but their reactions were meek, unlike that of Carolyn. I felt that this reiterated the dissonance of character and overall life aspects and relations between Jane and her father.
American Beauty is a very good drama. It contains storylines that people can relate to, twist and turns, surprises, emotion, murder, passions, and betrayal. The focus on a family and its life between themselves and their peers is something that creates that dramatic feel of everyday life, slightly exaggerated, personified in a single movie.

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