American Beauty(1999)
Submitted by Julio M
Academy Award – BEST PICTURE
POOPER: Thanks Curt (The Grand Poop-bah)
Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) kills Lester (Kevin Spacey).
Longer version:
Overhearing Angela (Mena Suvari) admit to his daughter Jane (Thora Birch) that, “if he looked better physically, she’d sleep with him” wakes something up in Lester that, at the same time, as he acts on those feelings, unleashes a series of unintended consequences in everyone around him. He starts working out in his garage, musters the courage to quit his advertisement job while blackmailing his condescending boss Brad (Barry Del Sherman) into obtaining a juicy severance package in exchange for not revealing certain unsavoury secrets, starts smoking marijuana bought from his next-door teenage neighbour Ricky (Wes Bentley), gets a less-demanding job at a local burger franchise restaurant and trades in his van for a much-desired red 1970 Pontiac Firebird. All of this happens to the surprise and annoyance of his overbearing, neurotic wife Carolyn (Annette Bening), who, in turn, ostensibly as a fellow real estate agent, first approaches successful realtor Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher) and ends up in an affair with him.
Meanwhile, the mild-mannered and eccentric Ricky, who supports himself as a drug dealer while making believe he is a caterer and waiter and having to deal with living under the same roof as his strict and homophobic military father Col. Fitts, catches the attention of the sullen and insecure Jane and they begin a friendship that evolves into a romance, which, in turn, spurns the vain and apparently over-sexualized Angela and starts causing a riff between the two girls. Ricky opens up to Jane about how his father punished him for being a stoner by sending him to Military School and, later, had him committed to a mental institution over an incident with a fellow student, yet, he does not hate or resent Fitts over this; in turn, Jane expresses her profound disdain for her father and how she hopes to have him killed and would be willing to pay for it, for which Ricky rebuffs her as “something not nice to do”.
Eventually, Lester discovers Carolyn and Buddy’s affair when they come by his workplace to order fast food and he spots them kissing; even though he appears not to care about it, Buddy gets cold feet, fearing a costly and messy divorce from his own wife and ends the affair, which leaves Carolyn tearful, frustrated and angered against Lester, and thinking of killing him herself, for which she acquires a gun -bolstered by her recent efforts at a shooting range-.
Matters come to a head for everyone when:
-Fitts gets a hold of Ricky’s camcorder, catches sight of a recording of Lester working out in the nude and, then, from Ricky’s window, sees a drug deal between them that mistakenly looks like they are having sex; when Ricky returns, the man angrily confronts and attacks him believing him to be gay, and Ricky, fed up with his abuse, challenges him on it appearing to be true, for which Fitts disowns him and throws him out of the house. Ricky wishes his mentally unstable mother, Barbara (Allison Janney), well, and leaves.
-Angela and Jane get into a hostile verbal argument over “Angela wanting to have sex with Lester”; Ricky appears wanting to take Jane to New York with him, to which Jane gleefully agrees, but Angela, out of jealousy, mocks, only for Ricky to scold her for “being conceited, ugly, boring and totally ordinary”, which spites her and makes her cry.
-Fitts comes to Lester’s garage, wondering where Carolyn is, to which Lester sarcastically retorts “she is probably sleeping with Buddy, which he doesn’t care about because of how much of a joke he feels his marriage actually is”. Fitts, dejected over everything that has happened so far, breaks down in Lester’s arms and, as Lester comforts him, Fitts makes a pass and tries to kiss him, which a surprised Lester rebuffs as a misunderstanding. Looking and feeling spurned, Fitts just walks away.
-Lester finds Angela and they both confess their feelings for each other; yet, as he gets her undressed to have sex, she admits she is actually an inexperienced virgin who “only wanted to look attractive to him, just in case”. When he backs off, she feels ashamed, he respectfully consoles her and makes her dinner while they amicably vent out their respective frustrations. Angela, however, does tell him, upon Lester asking, that “Jane is happy, well and in love”, which rejoices him.
Then, as everyone in Lester’s life is elsewhere, he sits alone in his kitchen contemplating a family picture with elation, feeling himself accomplished, when, suddenly, someone with a gun sneaks from behind him and shoots him dead, in the back of the head. The aftermath of this incident is shown, where: a horrified Carolyn comes home to discover Lester’s body and runs to hide her own gun while hugging Lester’s clothes and sobbing uncontrollably; Angela, Jane and Ricky are respectively startled by the firing of the gunshot -with the latter two also discovering the body and Ricky intrigued by it-; and a blood-soaked Fitts, revealed to be the killer, rushes home while the camera shows a blank space in his gun collection.
The movie ends with key images of the life of Lester and his family, and a voiceover reflection from him expressing, despite having been murdered, gratitude and happiness for what he lived and for all the unappreciated beauty there is in the world.
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