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AmericanBeauty is a 1999 American black comedy-drama film written by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes in his feature directorial debut. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, an advertising executive who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, played by Mena Suvari. Annette Bening stars as Lester's materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane. Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, and Allison Janney co-star. Academics have described the film as satirizing how beauty and personal satisfaction are perceived by the American middle class; further analysis has focused on the film's explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, materialism, self-liberation, and sexual grooming.

After being filmed in California from December 1998 to February 1999, American Beauty was released by DreamWorks Pictures in North America on September 17, 1999, receiving widespread critical and popular acclaim. It was the second-best-reviewed American film of the year behind Being John Malkovich and grossed over $350 million worldwide against its $15-million budget, becoming the ninth highest-grossing film of 1999. Reviewers praised most aspects of the production, with particular emphasis on Mendes, Spacey and Ball; criticism tended to focus on the familiarity of the characters and setting. DreamWorks launched a major campaign to increase American Beauty's chances of Oscar success following its controversial Best Picture snub for Saving Private Ryan (1998) the previous year.

At the 72nd Academy Awards, the film won five Oscars, including Best Picture, along with Best Director for Mendes, Best Actor for Spacey, Best Original Screenplay for Ball, and Best Cinematography for Hall. The film was nominated for and won many other awards and honors, mainly for directing, writing, and acting.

Lester Burnham, a middle-aged marketing executive in suburbia, despises his job and is unhappily married to neurotic, ambitious real estate agent Carolyn. Their 16-year-old daughter, Jane, hates her parents and has low self-esteem. Retired Marine colonel Frank Fitts, his near-catatonic wife Barbara, and their teenage son Ricky move in next door. Ricky documents the world around him with a camcorder, collecting recordings on videotape in his bedroom, as he finds beauty in unexpected places and things. To pay for supplies, he deals marijuana, using his part-time catering jobs as a front. A strict and abusive disciplinarian, Frank previously had Ricky sent to a psychiatric hospital and military school. Gay couple Jim Olmeyer and Jim Berkley, also neighbors to the Burnhams, welcome the Fitts family, angering the homophobic Frank.

One evening during a cheerleading routine at a school basketball game, Lester becomes infatuated with Jane's friend Angela Hayes, who often brags to her classmates about being sexually experienced. He starts having sexual fantasies about her, in which red rose petals are a recurring motif. Carolyn begins an affair with married real estate rival Buddy Kane. Lester quits his job, blackmails his supervisor Brad into giving him a generous severance package and starts working as a fry cook at the fast food restaurant Mr. Smiley's. He also buys his dream car, a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, and starts obsessively exercising with coaching from the Jims after overhearing Angela teasing Jane that she would have sex with Lester if he improved his physique. He begins smoking marijuana supplied by Ricky and returning Angela's flirts. The girls' friendship wanes when Jane starts a relationship with Ricky; while Angela thinks he is strange, Jane appreciates him for focusing on the beauty he sees within her.

Lester discovers Carolyn's infidelity when she orders a meal with Buddy at Mr. Smiley's. Buddy fears a costly divorce and ends the affair, while Carolyn is humiliated and simultaneously frustrated by her lack of professional success. Frank finds Ricky's recording of a nude Lester working out and becomes suspicious of their friendship, assuming that they are sexually involved after spying on their drug session; he viciously accuses Ricky of being gay and expels him from the house, to which Ricky defiantly agrees. Carolyn, driving home, withdraws a handgun she had bought earlier from the glove box as she listens to a self-help tape. At home, Jane argues with Angela over the latter's sexual interest in Lester when Ricky interrupts to ask Jane to leave with him for New York City, before he dismisses Angela as uninteresting and unattractive.

Frank tentatively approaches Lester in the Burnhams' garage, then breaks down and tearfully embraces him. Lester comforts Frank until Frank attempts to kiss him, so he gently rebuffs him. Lester finds Angela alone and consoles her, then professes his attraction to her during their conversation. As he begins to undress her on the couch, she admits her virginity. Lester realizes that she had feigned being sexually experienced, and he cannot continue. He bonds with her as they share their frustrations. Angela goes to the bathroom as Lester smiles at a family photograph, when an unseen figure shoots Lester in the back of the head at point-blank range.

Ricky and Jane, who had earlier considered killing Lester themselves, find Lester's body. In the master closet, Carolyn discards her gun and mournfully hugs Lester's clothing. A blood-soaked Frank is revealed as Lester's killer upon returning home, a gun missing from his collection. Lester's closing narration describes meaningful experiences during his life, for which he expresses gratitude. Despite being murdered, he is finally happy knowing that beauty can be found anywhere in the world.

Scholars and academics have offered many possible readings of American Beauty; film critics are similarly divided, not so much about the quality of the film, as their interpretations of it.[3] Described by many as about "the meaning of life" or "the hollow existence of the American suburbs",[4] the film has defied categorization by even the filmmakers. Mendes is indecisive, saying the script seemed to be about something different each time he read it: "a mystery story, a kaleidoscopic journey through American suburbia, a series of love stories; ... it was about imprisonment, ... loneliness, [and] beauty. It was funny; it was angry, sad."[5]

Mendes called American Beauty a rite of passage film about imprisonment and escape from imprisonment. The monotony of Lester's existence is established through his gray, nondescript workplace and characterless clothing.[8] In these scenes, he is often framed as if trapped, "reiterating rituals that hardly please him". He masturbates in the confines of his shower;[10] the shower stall evokes a jail cell and the shot is the first of many where Lester is confined behind bars or within frames,[8][9] such as when he is reflected behind columns of numbers on a computer monitor, "confined [and] nearly crossed out".[10]

The academic and author Jody W. Pennington argues that Lester's journey is the story's center.[11] His sexual reawakening through meeting Angela is the first of several turning points as he begins to "[throw] off the responsibilities of the comfortable life he has come to despise".[12] After Lester shares a joint with Ricky, his spirit is released and he begins to rebel against Carolyn.[13] Changed by Ricky's "attractive, profound confidence", he is convinced that Angela is attainable and sees that he must question his "banal, numbingly materialist suburban existence"; he takes a job at a fast-food outlet, which allows him to regress to a point when he could "see his whole life ahead of him".[14]

When Lester is caught masturbating by Carolyn, his angry retort about their lack of intimacy is the first time he says aloud what he thinks about her.[15] By confronting the issue and Carolyn's "superficial investments in others", he is trying to "regain a voice in a home that [only respects] the voices of mother and daughter".[14] His final turning point comes when he and Angela almost have sex;[16] after she confesses her virginity, he no longer thinks of her as a sex object, but as a daughter.[17] He holds her close and "wraps her up". Mendes called it "the most satisfying end to [Lester's] journey there could possibly have been". With these final scenes, Mendes intended to show him at the conclusion of a "mythical quest". After Lester gets a beer from the refrigerator, the camera pushes toward him, then stops facing a hallway down which he walks "to meet his fate".[16][18] Having begun to act his age again, Lester achieves closure.[17] As he smiles at a family photo, the camera pans slowly from Lester to the kitchen wall, onto which blood spatters as a gunshot rings out; the slow pan reflects the peace of his death.[19] His body is discovered by Jane and Ricky. Mendes said that Ricky's staring into Lester's dead eyes is "the culmination of the theme" of the film: that beauty is found where it is least expected.[20]

Professor Ann C. Hall disagrees; she says by presenting an early resolution to the mystery, the film allows the audience to put it aside "to view the film and its philosophical issues".[27] Through this examination of Lester's life, rebirth and death, American Beauty satirizes American middle class notions of meaning, beauty and satisfaction.[28] Even Lester's transformation only comes about because of the possibility of sex with Angela; he therefore remains a "willing devotee of the popular media's exaltation of pubescent male sexuality as a sensible route to personal wholeness".[29] Carolyn is similarly driven by conventional views of happiness; from her belief in "house beautiful" domestic bliss to her car and gardening outfit, Carolyn's domain is a "fetching American millennial vision of Pleasantville, or Eden".[30] The Burnhams are unaware that they are "materialists philosophically, and devout consumers ethically" who expect the "rudiments of American beauty" to give them happiness. Anker argues that "they are helpless in the face of the prettified economic and sexual stereotypes ... that they and their culture have designated for their salvation."[31]

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