“American Beauty”
- An analysis of the movie with focus on Carolyn & Lester Burnham

The Burnham’s seem to live the ‘American Dream’. They have good jobs, two expensive cars, and a nice home in the suburbs, and a healthy teenager. The family is portrayed as a normal, happy family, but if you do as the film tag says and “look closer”, you see that it isn’t true. Instead, they are living in a “suburban prison”.

Carolyn Burnham is the lonely wife of Lester Burnham and can be summed up in five words: materialistic, ambitious, seemingly successful, yet insecure, and a perfectionist. You see her fragile and insecure sides in a few scenes, for instance, when she tries to sell a house, and it doesn’t go as planned, she get’s more and more desperate. She’s alone in the house when she breaks down and allows herself to cry, but first she makes sure that nobody can see her by closing the blinds. She only let herself be vulnerable for a quick moment, before she gets angry, and starts to slap herself in the face, screaming:

“Stop it! Shut up! You’re weak! You Baby! Shut up!”

It’s a way to remind her that she’s strong, but the slapping is also a way of punishing herself for being weak. To most people crying is a natural thing to do when you’re sad, but for Carolyn it’s a shameful behavior.

After the big fight scene at the dinner table, Carolyn goes to Jane’s room to talk, and she tells her daughter:

“You cannot count on anyone except yourself. You know, it’s sad but true, and the sooner you learn it, the better.”

This quote clearly tells us that people have disappointed Carolyn in her past. Carolyn lived in a duplex, and the high goals that she has for her own life, can probably be tracked back to the things she felt was missing, when she was growing up. She has learned that she can only rely on herself to get things done. That’s why it’s a breaking point for her when she lets herself down like in the scene I described before.

While dealing with a damaged marriage, Carolyn meets her main competitor Buddy, with whom she gets an affair. The affair is a distraction, but mainly she’s attracted to Buddy because she sees aspects of herself in things he says, e.g.:

“In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times”

The quote could very likely be Carolyn’s life slogan. Her success is built on details and materialistic things. Her physical appearance match to perfection, she couldn’t stand the thought of Lester spilling beer on her perfect imported silk couch. Her life is all about being surrounded by perfection at all time, so she can suppress the bad things in life.

Which brings us to Lester Burnham. A middle-aged man in his midlife crisis, tired of his wife’s obsession of perfection. Lester is living in a “suburban prison”, which the movie shows through a series of framing shots. For an example when he’s in the shower trapped behind glass, when he watches his wife in the garden through the window, and at work, where his face is reflected on the computer screen, showing him trapped in columns of data.

His routine life meets a changing point when he meets his daughter’s high school friend Angela, a girl who fascinated him, the moment he laid eyes on her. His new obsession with Angela makes him think he has finally found a new purpose for living. This is also when Lester reach a critical point in his life. The obsession with Angela is a controversial topic:
There’s always a right and wrong, but the line can be so transparent, you can sometimes walk straight over it.

Lester’s lust for Angela is a symbol of lost masculinity. In the movie they show a lot of fantasy sequences of Angela to confirm this.

The point about Lester is simple: He never figured out how to grow up.

He’s getting depressed because his grown-up life isn’t turning out to be any fun at all. He buys a toy car with racing stripes, a childish way of having fun. The drugs and the alcohol are his high points in the movie – a symbol for his life in college where all he did was “Party and get laid”. He smashes the dinner plate to get “Mom’s” attention, instead of talking about his problems in a grown up way. One of his most “childish” moments is in the garage where he pumps iron to impress the “most popular girl in high school”, instead of just talking to her, and getting to know her.
The childish way of acting comes to an end when he finally gets to be alone with Angela. He’s very close to sleeping with her, until she tells him she’s a virgin, and in an instant he grows up. Instead of a sex symbol he now sees Angela as a frightened child in need of a parent. The adult Lester takes over. He realizes what he actually has and for the first time he appreciates it. He does not miss his old life.

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