Existentialism in American Beauty

Anna Vaeth

January 16, 2015

Mr. Waddell

C Block

                                               Existentialism In American Beauty

           In American Beauty, Lester Burnham, father of a low self-esteem girl named Jane and husband of an ambitious and materialistic wife Carolyn, has what one may say a mid-life crisis. He realizes he hates his job and becomes infatuated with his daughter’s cheerleading friend Angela Hayes. When he is about to be laid off by Brad, the company’s editor-in-chief, he blackmails the company for 60,000 dollars and gets a job at a fast food restaurant. He also trades in his Toyota Camry for a sports car and begins to smoke pot. He even starts working out specifically because he overhears Angela say that he would be sexy if he was in physical shape.  Meanwhile, his daughter becomes involved with the new next-door neighbor Ricky who video tapes everything he sees. His ex military father is extremely strict and homophobic. We later find out that he is secretly gay when he tries to kiss Lester.

           Existentialism is defined as when an individual sees the world as pointless and without meaning he may determine that meaning for himself. During the movie, Lester realizes his life is pointless when he is called into the office by Brand. He has a chance to save his job he has had for years if he writes a paper about how important he is to the company. He figures out that he actually hates his job, and his family is not appreciative of him as well. At this point he decides to make meaning for his life on his own terms. This coincides with the aspect of existentialism that you are alone in the world and you alone can create meaning. He isolates himself from society because one cannot rely on society to find meaning. Lester’s isolation is similar to how the narrator in Fight Club isolates himself from society to create a life worth living for. Both Lester and the narrator are absurd heroes and show the characteristic of revolt by their separation from society.

           Another key aspect to existentialism is how nothing really matters because we all die eventually and once we accept this absurd struggle we can find happiness. In The Stranger, this is clearly pointed out by Meursault when he has an outburst at the Chaplin. He knows he is going to be executed, so this allows him to realize his ultimate irrelevancy in the world. Lester shows this aspect in a different form. The narration voice is actually Lester after he died. The director shows the aspect of how we are going to die eventually through the dead narrator. At the end of the movie when Lester is dead, the narrator talks about how he really was happy and loved his family, and he just needed his mid-life crisis to realize it. This is similar to how Meursault finds happiness at the end of The Stranger and also realizes that he loves his mother. At the end, both characters are free from hope and can have a full acceptance of their absurd position in the universe.

           In general, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Nothing in the movie was expected, especially when Ricky’s father kisses Lester. Some may say that they saw that coming, but I would consider that hindsight bias. However, I am really bad a reading movies. I thought an interesting part of the movie was when Ricky’s father is walking back to his house with the gun missing from his wall. At this point we realize Ricky’s father was the one who killed Lester. It interesting because I felt disappointed that the wife ended up not being able to do it. The shots before the gun scene show the wife carrying a gun and being very agitated. We almost want the wife to kill him due to the scenes before so Ricky’s father gave much less satisfaction than the wife would have. Overall, the movie did not bore me at any point, keeping me at the edge of my seat the entire time.