American Beauty (film)

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Movie
German title American Beauty
Original title American Beauty
American beauty.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1999
length 121 minutes
Age rating FSK 12 (cinema
version) FSK 16 (purchase version)
JMK 14
Rod
Director Sam Mendes
script Alan Ball
production Bruce Cohen ,
Dan Jinks
music Thomas Newman
camera Conrad L. Hall
cut Tariq Anwar ,
Christopher Greenbury
occupation

American Beauty is an American drama from 1999 . The film title is derived from a type of rose, American Beauty .

action

The story is told post mortem by the main character Lester Burnham himself : At the beginning, the viewer is told that he will die at the end of the film ("I'll be dead in less than a year. Of course I don't know yet").

Lester is in a midlife crisis and is dissatisfied with his life; the - according to his own admission - the highlight of his day takes place during the morning masturbation in the shower cubicle. He finds life with his narrow-minded and exaggerated wife Carolyn and his bitchy daughter Jane bleak. His wife struggles as an independent real estate agent without much success; Jane is in puberty and rejects him as a role model. Even his dreary work in a magazine publisher does not make him happy, and he experiences neither gratitude nor respect for his work or for himself as a person from his family, but rather "the terrible feeling of being meaningless".

At a sporting event, he meets Angela, his daughter's pubescent school friend, and falls in love with her at first sight. He then tries to get back into shape and make himself more attractive to the young girl. He also meets Ricky Fitts, who recently moved into the Burnham's house next door with his parents. It was through him that Lester got back into contact with marijuana for the first time after his youth .

In the further course Lester provokes his expulsion from the hated profession in favor of a job as a fast food operator ("I'm looking for a job with the least possible degree of responsibility"), blackmailed his boss Brad for an annual salary and bought his dream car, one 1970 Pontiac Firebird . All attempts to find common ground with his only materially oriented wife fail. Carolyn starts an affair with the much more successful real estate agent Buddy Kane, which Lester leaves cold, as he has long since finished his marriage and Carolyn anyway. Meanwhile, a soulmate relationship and love develops between his daughter and the introverted outsider Ricky.

Lester's "first day of the rest of his life" ends as abruptly as prejudices and misunderstandings arise. Ricky's authoritarian father Frank, a retired officer and gun collector, has watched Lester and his son roll a joint through a window and mistakenly interpreted the scene as a homoerotic relationship between Lester and Ricky. When Ricky returns home, his father hits him as usual, and Ricky confirms his assumption that he is selling himself and making a lot of money. Ricky is expelled from the house by his father and asks Jane if she is going to New York with him. When Jane agrees, he gives his opinion to the protesting Angela, who then leaves the room crying.

Frank shows up at Lester's and tries to kiss him. When he is rejected by Lester, he leaves disappointed in the rain. Lester finally discovers Angela and exchanges tenderness with her. When she tells him that she is still a virgin, he lets go of her and talks to her. Lester learns from Angela, among other things, that Jane is in love. While Angela is in the bathroom, Lester looks at an old family photo showing happy times and feels good about herself. Carolyn drives home with a gun in her purse and tells herself that she wants to finish everything. In the next scene, Lester is killed with a headshot without showing the shooter himself. Carolyn is still on her way. Frank goes into his house with a bloodied shirt. Carolyn breaks down in the hallway in despair.

Lester, who tells the plot from death, is not sad or angry about his death; he is grateful for every moment of his "stupid little life" and for the beauty in the world.

Emergence

The production of American Beauty in Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studios initially appeared risky, as central American values ​​and myths such as masculinity, the cheerleader as a sexual dream object, the desire to be something special, and the promised paradise of suburban life were called into question . The imagery was designed from the start to arouse doubts about the dream of unlimited possibilities; one was inspired by Edward Hopper's pictures of lonely people and the joyless style of American Gothic with gloomy and narrow interiors, but also by René Magritte . A conscious decision was made to choose locations that were known from earlier social satirical films and that showed the boredom of suburbia ( Divorce American Style 1967), or locations for TV series from the time of the economic miracle were revisited. Sam Mendes, who had made a name for himself at the London theater, had never been commissioned to make a film and had to use the expertise of the then 72-year-old Conrad L. Hall. Mendes led the actors as an ensemble as in the theater, which required long dialogues with them and seemed unusual.

synchronization

The synchronous work took place at Berliner Synchron . Lutz Riedel , who played the role of Jim Olmeyer, also wrote the dialogue book and directed the dialogue.

role actor Voice actor
Lester Burnham Kevin Spacey Till Hagen
Carolyn Burnham Annette Bening Traudel Haas
Jane Burnham Torah Birch Manja Doering
Ricky Fitts Wes Bentley Matthias Hinze
Angela Hayes Mena Suvari Julia digit
Col. Frank Fitts Chris Cooper Jan Spitzer
Buddy Kane Peter Gallagher Martin Keßler
Barbara Fitts Allison Janney Beate Pfeiffer
Jim Olmeyer Scott Bakula Lutz Riedel
Jim Berkley Sam Robards Udo Schenk
Brad Dupree Barry Del Sherman Bernd Vollbrecht

Others

Soundtrack

  1. Thomas Newman - Dead Already
  2. Elliott Smith - Because
  3. The Folk Implosion - Free to Go
  4. Free - All Right Now
  5. Bill Withers - Use Me
  6. Eels - Cancer for the Cure
  7. The Who - The Seeker
  8. Bobby Darin - Don't Rain on My Parade
  9. Betty Carter - Open the Door
  10. Gomez - We Haven't Turned Around
  11. Peggy Lee - Bali Ha'i
  12. Thomas Newman - Any Other Name
  13. Annie Lennox - Don't Let It Bring You Down
  14. Bob Dylan - All Along the Watchtower
  15. The Guess Who - American Woman

(nominated for Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media)

An album with 19 tracks ( American Beauty (Score) ) exclusively with Thomas Newman's compositions was released on January 11, 2000 and won a Grammy Award .

Awards

The IMDb has received a total of 206 nominations for the film internationally, including 108 awards won (as of December 2017).

The most important film awards ( Oscar , Golden Globe and BAFTA Award ) are listed here:

Academy Awards 2000

nominated for:

Golden Globe Awards 2000

nominated for:

BAFTA Awards 2000

nominated for:

The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awarded the film the title “particularly valuable”.

Effect and reviews

The film, which was financed very tightly at 12.5 million US dollars, went to theaters with only 16 copies in Los Angeles and New York, but grossed over 350 million dollars worldwide. Although he works with funds from independent cinema, he has had a strong impact on Hollywood productions. The New York Post called it “a flat-out masterpiece, surely the best movie of the year; indeed, an all-time classic. " The Austin Chronicle wrote, "A brilliant, exhilarating piece of filmmaking".

Carsten Baumgardt from Filmstarts.de gave American Beauty the highest rating of 5 stars and said: “Once again, the Englishman Sam Mendes - a European - managed to precisely analyze and dissect American sensitivities. Between joke and tragedy, always biting and often cynical, 'American Beauty' with relish turns the clichés of the soap operas into their opposite and leaves the American dream in a heap of pieces. The tragic hero wants to seduce a young person, the daughter runs away with the drug dealer next door, the woman is on the verge of suicide and the patriotic neighbor [...] develops psychopathic traits. […] Not only Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening are captivating in the grandiose ensemble, the discovery par excellence is the 21-year-old newcomer Wes Bentley, who with his multi-faceted, touching portrayal manages to establish a dealer as the only real sympathetic figure. "

“The ironic look behind the externally gleaming facade of small-town America is expanded sympathetically and with curious sensitivity through a complementary narrative level to create a complex and profound portrait of people and generations. A highly remarkable debut film that is equally convincing in terms of style and performance. "

- Lexicon of international film

“The Brit Sam Mendes with relish destroys the ironically exaggerated face of American philistineism . Artistically framed and perfectly balanced between farce and tragedy of being, 'American Beauty' is bitter and beautiful as real life, but on the other hand just as artificial as what it claims to criticize. "

- Filmspiegel.de

"Far from any embarrassment, 'American Beauty' exudes a warmth of the heart that can move you to tears, especially in the most difficult and sensitive moments of a film, when the characters openly confess their feelings."

- Lars-Olav Beier in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from January 20, 2000

The critic Joanna Berry characterizes the film as a "black comedy" that shows people who "allegedly live the American dream - people who lack nothing materially, but who are unhappy and dissatisfied despite everything." it a parallel to the film Blue Velvet by David Lynch , which "let us take a look behind the curtains of suburban life ," whereas American Beauty tears those curtains down for good. She judges that the cinematic effectiveness is surprising when you consider that it is “the first work of a man who has previously worked for the theater.” She concludes with the remark that the film is “beautiful and dark - a sensational debut. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Age rating for American Beauty . Youth Media Commission .
  2. ↑ Munaretto 2010, pp. 7-14.
  3. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | American Beauty. Retrieved March 5, 2018 .
  4. ↑ American Beauty (1999) - Full cast and crew. IMDb, accessed February 2, 2011 .
  5. ↑ Chloe Hunter. IMDb, accessed February 2, 2011 .
  6. ↑ See IMDb .
  7. ↑ Evaluation of the German Film and Media Evaluation (FBW)
  8. ↑ Munaretto 2010, p. 7 ff.
  9. ↑ American Beauty. Filmstarts.de, accessed on August 23, 2011 .
  10. ↑ American Beauty. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  11. ↑ American Beauty. Filmspiegel.de, accessed on January 21, 2016 .
  12. ^ Joanna Berry: American Beauty (1999) . In: Steven Jay Schneider, Maja Ueberle-Pfaff (ed.): 1001 films that you should see before life is over. Selected and presented by 77 international film critics. Twelfth, updated new edition. Edition Olms, Oetwil am See 2017, ISBN 978-3-283-01243-4 , p. 879 .