AMERICAN BEAUTY Tribute

I remember that when American Beauty came out in the theaters, there were a lot of people who talked about it in a good way, though I did not have the pleasure to watch it and discover why until a few years later since I was more interested in horror movies and that was the genre I would usually choose when going to the theatre back then. I don’t exactly remember when I first watched the film but  I guess it was when I was 16 or 17 more or less. What I do remember is that the teacher I was working with on my Research Project, which I did about the movie Donnie Darko, told me to watch it as a reference because he found some resemblances in both movies.

American Beauty is a critique of the so-called American Dream and the cracks behind this idealized concept but is certainly much more than that. It contains a lot of philosophical and universal messages thanks to an excellent script, which I consider one of the best ever written in cinema history. The character’s backstory and development, as well as the dialogues and the situations that take place along the story, are perfectly located in order to lead us to the climax. Everything in the script is perfect and it helps to improve the directing and performances, which are also excellent, not to mention the beautiful and delicate score that gives each scene the right emotion. The greatest thing about the movie is that you always learn something new no matter how many times you watch it and that only happens with really good movies. 

For the video tribute to this movie, I used the song The Difference. It seemed pretty adequate to me to use a song about repression and hypocrisy to accompany the images of this story. Although the film has certain mysticism that the song lacks, I still like how the lyrics fit in with the characters and some situations.

THESIS

There is a lot of thesis in this movie. We could talk about repression, hypocrisy, madness, fate, beauty, life… As I said, it’s a marvelous script in which lots of themes are mixed together. But the main point of the movie is, in my opinion, this idea that there is life beyond the material and a benevolent force that makes life beautiful even with the sordid things. This comes reinforced by the character of the young teenage boy and the famous “bag scene”. In the end, it’s like an ode to our existence and a metaphor for fate and the impossibility to predict the future.

The decisions we make in the present implicate ironic consequences in the future.