When the film first flashed a flashback, the protagonist Lester's calm and self-deprecating voice sounded lightly: "My name is Lester Benham. . This is my surroundings. This is my street. This is my life. I am 42 years old. In less than a year, I will be dead." So we know the end too early, and we are a little disappointed; but When the rose petals fluttered, the curtain of sin and beauty was also lifted, and a wonderful American story was slowly staged accompanied by brisk music, with the desire to spy on the hearts of the characters and the obsession with sin and beauty. The advent seems to be independent of the film, has nothing to do with the story, has nothing to do with the ending, we can't restrain it, we can only indulge in this rose and pistol dream.
The protagonist of Lust for Sin,
Lester, is a loser through and through. In his own words: "I'm just an ordinary person with nothing to lose." Beneath the normal surface of his ordinary middle-class American family, his relationship with his wife has dropped to freezing point, and he is not understood by his daughter. The crisis of being fired from the company. But Lester has always been full of self-deprecating spirit, with some realism and black humor: facing his wife Caroline's accusations, he has already turned a blind eye, but it does not hinder his interest in quarreling with her; seeing that the company can't stay. , he took the opportunity to extort a large amount of "hush money"; after leaving the company, he worked in a fast food restaurant without any worries to enjoy leisure; tired of driving, listening to music, or smoking some marijuana.
This kind of dull but comfortable middle-aged life will continue indefinitely, if not for the appearance of An Qi, her daughter Jenny's classmate. This beautiful girl worthy of her name instantly ignited Lester's suppressed feelings for many years. Lolita's temptation is like a snake digging into his dreams, hearts, and life. Lester was so addicted he couldn't help himself.
What Lester is experiencing is nothing more than what he represents for middle-class men in America who are experiencing a midlife crisis: unsatisfactory work, family discord, a life of lack of passion, and as Lester himself puts it: "In a certain In a sense, I'm dead." At this time, An Qi's appearance just filled his spiritual emptiness. Her beauty and vitality were what he had long lost and longed for. Lester found her in her. The answer: having her seems to be the only way to save yourself from the quagmire of life. Lester was thus caught up in the urge to get her.
Lester's wife Caroline is a typical career woman on the surface, but she is helpless and fragile inside. Her husband's incompetence and work troubles also put her behind bars. Caroline's compensation method is to seek the support of stronger people, so extramarital affairs inevitably breed. Caroline's desire is the desire for success. Her lover, the real estate tycoon who is also restrained by the desire for success, said: "Success is to maintain the image of a successful person at all times." The spiritual lack of middle-class people is evident.
The crime of youth
and the sin of youth often have an unavoidable element. Youth is a helpless time, and no one teaches you how to live. The sins of the teenagers who are scrambling in it are always so heart-pounding and sighing. Lester's daughter Jenny is a typical teenage girl - angry, insecure, bewildered. Lester said: "I want to tell her that everything will pass, but I don't want to lie to her." This line is almost the same as the classic dialogue in "This Killer Is Not Too Cold" "Life is so hard, it's still only childhood. How can life be like this?" "It's always been like this" has the same effect, it succinctly and straightforwardly reveals the helplessness in life, and also highlights the troubles of teenagers. Growing up in a family that lacked love and was neglected by her parents for a long time, Jenny felt hatred in her heart, but this hatred was stated at the beginning of the film that "someone should kill him", which is still shocking.
Jenny's classmate and new neighbor, Ricky, is a weirdo with a VCR obsessed with everything, and his latest candid target is the Leicester family. Ricky was sent to a psychiatric hospital for disobeying the military academy, and the most secret truth is that he lived an unknown life as a drug addict under the guise of odd jobs and was engaged in drug trafficking for many years. The deviant behavior is actually just a resistance to his father's tyranny and brutality.
Jenny's classmate An Qi is a girl who talks about sex every day and enjoys talking about her experience with men, but the experience of this arrogant princess is just made up to hide her inner fear of admitting and fearing her ordinary life. lie.
The youth of the three can not be called normal. Jenny's spiritual shadow prompted her to come together with Ricky, who was also injured, and complicit in the idea of killing her father and leaving home. An Qi's vanity made her willing to sacrifice her body for Lester, just because she was unwilling to be stubborn in the ordinary world.
The Guns of Sin
"American Beauty" has shots of guns no less than roses. Caroline's gun and Frank's gun both set the stage for the film's ending. The means of violence represented by the gun is the sin of imposing oneself and imposing others, a complete renunciation of kindness.
Under pressure, Caroline took shooting as a way of venting on the advice of her lover, and gradually became fascinated by the thrill and excitement of shooting. After her husband found out about an extramarital affair, Caroline, who was ashamed and annoyed, was determined not to be a victim, and then picked up the gun and decided to show her trump card with her husband. It's just that she was finally overwhelmed by her own helplessness, and she went home crying and stranded the gun permanently.
It was Frank who finally shot and killed Lester, another important character in the film, Ricky's father. From many self-introductions, we can know his military identity, and his arrogant, violent and extremely stubborn character is also closely related to his identity experience. He placed high hopes on his son. When he learned that his son was taking drugs, he immediately sent him to the military academy and then to the hospital. This extreme behavior was not so much caring, but a perverted abuse of his son's self-esteem. His military discipline-like demands failed to get Ricky to obey, and the discovery (misunderstanding) that his son was gay directly led to Ricky being forced to leave the house, and another secret about Frank was exposed at the same time. He couldn't stand his son's sexual orientation. It turned out that he couldn't admit and was ashamed to recognize the fact that he was gay. After being rejected by Lester, who was mistaken for his son's lover, the anger that the secret hidden in his heart was made public finally forced him to He aimed his gun at Leicester...
a beautiful dream
For people, dreams are a reflection of the latter's real life, but it lives in people's subconscious, and it is difficult to face its form directly through the hard shell of reality. There are not many movies made of dreams, or the dream reappearance such as Kurosawa Akira's "Dream", or the pure imaginary fiction after the drug addiction state of "Trainspotting". Although "American Beauty" is not a manifest dream, many of them escape from reality, or in other words, move Lester's dream into reality. The English name of "American Beauty" originally meant a kind of red rose, and the element of red rose was also brought into full play by the director, which can be seen from the poster.
The first time Lester saw An Qi dancing, his sweet dream started magically. There was only An Qi facing the only audience in the venue - Lester danced provocative dance steps, roses in her The chest blooms. The scene that night was even more wonderful. The director's exaggerated expression made it a classic scene in film history: rose petals landed on Lester's bed to fill him, and Angel was naked in a sea of roses. , smiled sweetly and put on a seductive gesture - "I seem to have been in a coma for 20 years, and now I finally wake up." Lester's dream has only just begun. Later, An Qi came to Lester's house with Jenny for the night. When Lester handed Angel wine, the fantasy scene happened again. After kissing An Qi, he took a rose petal out of his mouth. The imagination of the screenwriter shows a middle-aged man's fantasy of desire so juicy and beautiful.
What does the rose in the Rose of Beauty
film represent? I think there are two meanings in it.
Rose has always appeared with Lester's fantasies of Angel, and is an explicit and poetic expression of Lester's desire. On the one hand, this desire appears with the attitude of sin, but on the other hand, it is an unattainable beauty. The more difficult to obtain, the more deadly desire, the more suffocating it appears. When Lester was finally able to kiss Angie (in reality), the sound of the pattering rain outside the window, the beautiful music, the contrast of light and shadow, and the composition, rendered this morally unacceptable love innocuous. , fascinated and psychedelic like a bunch of roses with thorns that dare not touch their hands. Kevin Spacey took the role of Lester just right. In order to save a middle-aged man who failed in his marriage and career, he was favored by Angie in order to save himself from a stagnant life. It was like a first love. Showing silly yet cute traits. Without solid acting skills, the role of Lester is likely to be reduced to an ordinary uncle who is full of colors.
But so far in the film, the characters have not obtained the final redemption, which also leads to another meaning of the rose. The first to realize this meaning was Ricky, who loved to shoot videotapes. Hidden in the videotapes he filled the entire room was a teenager's subtle and special perception of life. When Ricky told Jenny that the most beautiful thing he photographed was actually just a plastic bag fluttering in the wind, his moving language slowly revealed his secret: "It's a cold and snowy weather, There was electricity in the air, you could almost hear it. Do you understand? The plastic bag was dancing with me, begging me to play with it like a child. We danced for fifteen minutes. That day I learned that there is life in everything , and an unbelievably benevolent force that wants me to know that there is nothing to fear in this world, never...Sometimes there is something in the world so beautiful that I can't stand it and my heart almost falls." The soft heart that has been covered under the surface of Ricky's abnormal behavior is exposed to us in this way. The videos he shoots serve as a reminder to himself not to forget the beautiful things in life that contain the power to overcome all fears.
At the end of the film, An Qi's perfection made Lester finally retreat and made him realize. After a brief heart-to-heart talk with Angie, Lester smiled and said to her: "I'm very happy." He found his life full of absurdities, but also realized something more precious. At the moment when the redemption is almost complete, the gunshots sound, but don't worry, the power of kindness has come to Lester, and the family photos and rose vase he looked at before his death have directly implied us, and this rose has another meaning. It is the most beautiful thing in life and the most overlooked thing.
The roses that Lester loses in the film are his family, and the little beautiful details of his life, as he indulges in the last moments of his life - a moment slow like an ocean of time, he thinks of his wife Carlo Lin, daughter Jenny, cousin's Firebird car, the time when he was lying comfortably on the lawn as a child... Lester, who was lying in a pool of blood, was smiling, and Ricky, who had already understood the beauty of life, looked at this. In one scene, he seemed to understand Lester's happiness, and returned him the same smile. In the last moments of his life, Lester's confession is so persuasive:
"I can be angry about what happened to me, but the world is too beautiful to be angry all the time. Sometimes I feel like I've seen too many beautiful people at once. Stuff, almost unbearable. My heart swelled like a balloon, about to burst. Then I remembered to relax, don't hold on, so it just ran away like rain. I don't feel anymore, just grateful. Grateful for my stupidity every moment of my life. I'm sure you don't understand what I'm talking about, but don't worry, you'll understand one day."
Although "American Beauty" describes the living conditions of a group of abnormal middle-class Americans, it does not have a strong moral criticism. Although the film ends with the death of the protagonist, it is not a hopeless and unrealistic view of the characters' lives. Instead, through each character with distinct and complex characteristics, from the perspective of their way of life and attitude towards life, it tells the audience what is most cherished in life but is often overlooked. The "sin" in "American Beauty" is expressed in an attitude of irony, ridicule rather than condemnation and whipping. Although it is called "sin", it is not an unforgivable sin, and redemption can be accomplished through personal power. "Beauty" runs through the film from beginning to end. In addition to the beauty of the characters and the story itself, the director uses exaggerated and imaginative photography and exquisite and perfect soundtrack to set off the texture of the entire film. At the same time, this is not a movie that promotes the narrative trend with the plot, but rather mobilizes a number of distinctive and distinctive characters to fill this American style painting. The 72nd Academy Award for Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay gave it its due recognition and made "American Beauty" a classic that cannot be ignored in film history. work.
ps. Contribution to GYJ
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