American Beauty(1999)

Plot Summary

• Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a middle-aged (42 yrs old) magazine executive who despises his job and is unhappily married to Carolyn (Annette Bening), a neurotic and ambitious real estate broker. Their 16-year-old daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), abhors her parents and is a cheerleader despite low self-esteem. The Burnhams' new neighbors are retired US Marine colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper), his near-catatonic wife, Barbara (Allison Janney), and their teenage son, Ricky (Wes Bentley), who obsessively films his surroundings with a camcorder, collecting hundreds of recordings on video tapes in his bedroom, while using his part-time job as a waiter to serve as a front for dealing cannabis. Ricky films Jane and Lester as they go about their daily routines. Jane notices Ricky and it creeps her out.Frank is a strict disciplinarian who has previously forced Ricky into a military academy and briefly committed him to a psychiatric hospital. Jim Olmeyer (Scott Bakula) and Jim Berkley, a gay couple and business partners who live nearby, welcome the family to the neighborhood; Frank later reveals his homophobia when angrily discussing the encounter with Ricky.During one of the school's basketball games, Lester has an out-of-body experience and becomes infatuated with Jane's conceited friend, Angela (Mena Suvari), seeing her perform a half-time routine. He starts having sexual fantasies about Angela, in which red rose petals are a recurring motif.Meanwhile, Carolyn (who is having a lot of trouble selling properties) begins an affair with a married business rival, Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher). Lester meets Ricky at one of Carolyn's work parties where Ricky was Bartending and the 2 of them hit it off. Lester is impressed when Ricky quits his job to spend time with Lester. Meanwhile Jane knows Ricky is filming her in her bedroom and is happy as someone is actually interested in her, than Angela for a change.When his boss (Brad) informs Lester that he is to be laid off, Lester blackmails him into giving him an indulgent severance package (since he has incriminating evidence against the management of the company) and quits his job, taking employment at a local fast-food restaurant. Lester is now confident and even tells Carolyn off when she threatens him with a divorce (she has no grounds for divorce, and he is entitled to half her income from the real estate business)He buys his dream car, a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, and starts working out after he overhears Angela tell Jane that she would have sex with him if he improved his physique. He begins smoking cannabis supplied by Ricky, and flirts with Angela whenever she visits Jane. The girls' friendship wanes after Jane starts a relationship with Ricky, which Angela scoffs at. They bond over what Ricky considers the most beautiful imagery he has ever filmed: a plastic bag blowing in the wind.Carolyn and Lester's marriage gets worse as Lester gets more and more confident and defies her openly. Jane is distraught with this drama and seeks a sexual outlet with Ricky. Ricky tells Jane how his dad caught him smoking pot at 15 and sent him to military school. Ricky got kicked out of there and ended up having a big fight with a kid at school (he almost killed the kid). He was sent to a mental hospital. Jane tells Ricky about how she is angry at her dad, who has a crush on Angela. Ricky offers to kill Lester and Jane accepts.Lester discovers Carolyn's infidelity (when she drives into the fast-food joint with Buddy, where Lester was working as a burger flipper), but reacts indifferently. Buddy ends the affair, fearing an expensive divorce. The embarrassment combined with her lack of professional success drives Carolyn into a spiral.Meanwhile, Frank becomes suspicious of Lester and Ricky's friendship and later finds his son's footage of a nude Lester lifting weights, which Ricky captured by chance. After spying on Ricky and Lester's drug transaction, Frank wrongly concludes that the two are sexually involved. He viciously confronts Ricky for their supposed affair, accusing him of being gay. Ricky falsely admits the charge and goads his father into expelling him from their home, giving him his freedom. A distraught Carolyn is shown sitting in her car where she removes a handgun from the glove box. At home, Jane argues with Angela about her flirtation with Lester, which is interrupted when Ricky asks Jane to run away with him. He persuades her to come with him to New York City, and admonishes Angela as ugly, boring and ordinary.Frank seemingly goes to confront Lester, but then breaks down crying, hugs him and attempts to kiss him. Lester gently rebuffs the colonel, who flees in humiliation. Lester finds a distraught Angela sitting alone in the dark. She asks him to tell her she is beautiful; he does, and they kiss. As they are about to have sex, Angela admits she is a virgin, causing Lester to have a breakthrough of conscience. Now unable to fulfill his fantasy and do what he considers to be unbecoming, Lester instead comforts her, and they bond over their shared frustrations in life. Angela goes to the bathroom and Lester smiles at a family photograph in his kitchen, seeming to have come full circle with his mid-life crisis.In this moment, an unseen figure shoots Lester in the back of the head. Ricky and Jane find Lester's body, while Carolyn is seen in her closet, discarding her gun, and crying hysterically. A bloodied Frank (Frank killed Lester for rebuffing him) returns home where a gun is missing from his collection.Lester's closing narration describes meaningful experiences during his life; he says that, despite his death, he is happy because there is so much beauty in the world.

Storyline

• After his death sometime in his 43rd year, suburbanite Lester Burnham tells of the last few weeks of his life, during which he had no idea of his imminent passing. He is a husband to real estate agent Carolyn Burnham and father to high school student Jane Burnham. Although Lester and Carolyn once loved each other, they now merely tolerate each other. Typical wallflower Jane also hates both her parents; the three suffer individually in silence in their home life. Jane tries to steer clear of both her parents. Carolyn, relatively new to the real estate business, wants to create the persona of success to further her career, aspiring to the professional life of Buddy Kane, the king of the real estate business in their neighborhood. Lester merely walks mindlessly through life, including at his job in advertising. His company is downsizing, and he, like all the other employees, has to justify his position to the newly hired efficiency expert to keep his job. Things change for Lester when he falls in love at first sight with Jane's more experienced classmate, Angela Hayes. Both Janie and Angela can see Lester's sexual infatuation with Angela, who courts such attention from any man as a sign that she is model material, she having once appeared in Seventeen and is a career to which she aspires. Lester's infatuation with Angela gives him a reenergized view on life, where he openly doesn't care anymore what anyone thinks about what he does, anyone except Angela. This infatuation coincides with the Fittses moving in next door: homophobic disciplinarian US Marine Colonel Frank Fitts who rules the house with a military fist (that fist being both figurative and literal), his semi-comatose wife Barbara Fitts, and their bright and quietly subversive 18-year-old son Ricky Fitts, who openly abides by his father's rules while behind the scenes lives by his own quite different perspective. Much like Lester's infatuation, Ricky immediately becomes infatuated with Jane; he considers girls like Angela as ordinary. The entry of Angela and the Fittses into the Burnhams' lives ultimately leads to each of the players confronting what is truly in his or her heart. — Huggo It takes courage to openly admit that you have failed in almost every aspect of your life, and that's exactly what the unhappy advertiser and self-declared loser Lester Burnham does: he uninhibitedly embraces his failure as a father, as a husband, and as a professional. With Lester's high-strung wife, Carolyn, and his always sullen teenage daughter, Jane, loving to express their glaring contempt, the fond memories of a once-happy existence rapidly start to fade; however, the fragrant apparition of Angela - an off-limits object of desire - reminds Lester what life used to be, or better yet, what it could be. Now, for the first time, the unloved Lester wants out of his endless suburban slumber, thirsting for a drastic change and a superbly shameless transformation - all in the name of love, and above all, lost beauty. — Nick Riganas Lester and Carolyn Burnham are, on the outside, a perfect husband and wife in a perfect house in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter's friends. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is developing a happy friendship with a shy boy-next-door named Ricky, who lives with an abusive father. — Jessie Skinner Lester Burnham is suffering a mid-life crisis that affects the lives of members of his family, which is made up of his super bitch of a wife Carolyn and rebelling daughter Jane, who hates him. Carolyn is a real estate agent, a little too wrapped up in her job, who starts an affair with business rival Buddy Kane. Meanwhile, Jane seems to fall in love with Ricky Fitts, the strange boy next door, who is a drug dealer/documentarian and lives under a roof governed by a very strict Marine father and a speechless mother. Lester's mid-life crisis causes him to drastically change his life around when he quits his job and works at a fast-food restaurant. He starts working out to gain the attention of Angela (a friend of Jane's) who brags about her sexual exploits every weekend. Lives change and not for the best. — Mystic80 1 more All