American Beauty (1999) or, Escape by Death

8/29/2013

American Beauty (1999) or, Escape by Death

♥♥♥♥♥

+ 3rd Best Movie of the Year

+ Best Debut of the Year + Best Drama of the Year + Best Mega-Hit Movie of the Year + Biggest Moneymaker of the Year: 127.48 mil. $ range

The iconic poster for Sam Mendes' American Beauty with its ingeniously simple tagline, 'Look closer'

Lester Burnham is a middle-aged father and husband, who is numbed to a zombie-like-state in an American suburb with his 9-5 job, his real estate-pushing wife and angry teenage daughter. just as some unpredicted things start to happen to him...

At first glance the characters of American Beauty might seem a bit psychologically sketchy, but then the plot takes them to new places: And although everything which takes place in some ways couldn't be more banal, yet they all still feels perfectly real and plausible.
American Beauty is written by Alan Ball (True Blood (2008-14), creator) and directed by debuting English master filmmaker Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road (2008)). It is Ball's thematically heavy script, above all, which has been studied over and over again since 1999. - What is the film saying exactly? And how does it say it? People obsess over American Beauty as few other films. And pairing it with Mendes' sensitive, keen direction is a perfect match.
Kevin Spacey (Margin Call (2011)) arguably has the role of his career here as Lester, SPOILER who liberates himself (and pays for it.) Spacey shines brightly here, and will always be remembered for his time as Lester, a great character that really strikes up the audiences' imagination. In other parts co-starring Annette Bening (The Siege (1998)) and supporting actors Mena Suvari (Psych (2010), TV-series), Thora Birch (Winter of Frozen Dreams (2009)) and Chris Cooper (Great Expectations (1998)) are all remarkable.
American Beauty is an incredibly powerful film, SPOILER and I wish I could believe in the final thoughts from Lester in the film, while instead it just makes me sad.To understand and make up your own mind, you will have to watch the film.

Related posts:

Sam Mendes: Spectre (2015) - Mendes' second Bond delivers
Skyfall (2012) - Overly celebrated third pout from Daniel Craig as Bond in slick production
Away We Go (2009) or, Where Do We Start This Family?

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 356.2 mil. $
= Mega-hit
[American Beauty premiered 8 September (Los Angeles) and runs 122 minutes. Ball had developed his idea for the film as a play in the early 1990s. He sold the script as his first movie script in 1997 to DreamWorks for 250k $. Reportedly 20 big filmmakers were approached to direct, before Mendes was hired from the directing stage successes, working for scale, he reportedly finally only made about 38k $ on the job. Shooting lasted 50 days from December 1998 - February 1999 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #11 in 16 theaters to an impressive 816k $ first weekend (a 53k $ average). It spent 7 weeks in the top 5 in an unusual release that saw the film boom and decline, only to boom and enter the top 5 again for another 2 weeks months later following its Oscar wins: Its placements were #4-#3-#4-#5-#X-#4, followed in March with 2 weeks in #5. The film played a very long 38 weeks in North America, where it grossed 130 mil. $ ( 36.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 34.6 mil. $ (9.7 %) and Germany with 24.1 mil. $ (6.8 %). The film was nominated for 8 Oscars, winning 5: For Best Picture, Director, Leading Actor, Script and Cinematography (Conrad L. Hall (Divorce American Style (1967))). It lost Actress to Hillary Swank for Boys Don't Cry, Editing to The Wachowski Brothers' masterpiece The Matrix and Best Score (Thomas Newman (Skyfall (2012))) to John Corigliano for The Red Violin/Le Violon Rouge. It also won 3/6 Golden Globe noms, 6/14 BAFTAs, a Grammy, 3 National Board of Review awards and many other awards and honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch better than this review. IMDb users have ranked it #65 on the site's Top 250 list, sitting between Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece Princess Mononoke/Mononoke-Hime (1997) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Mendes returned with the great Road to Perdition (2002). Spacey returned in The Big Kahuna (1999) and Bening in What Planet Are You From? (2000). American Beauty is certified fresh at 88 % with an 8.2/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

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8/29/2013

American Beauty (1999) or, Escape by Death

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