Word: lesters
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Needless to say, this is film about many things. Mostly, it is about a year in the life of Lester Burnham--father, neighbor, self-hater. Because Lester is played by Kevin Spacey, we can see embers glowing behind his eyes even in the darkly comic early stages of the film when he has hit rock bottom: disdained by his harpy wife (Annette Bening), despised by his daughter (lovely, sad-faced Thora Birch) and distant from his own passions. The highlight of his day, Spacey tells us, is a quiet masturbation session in the shower. "It's all downhill from there...
...Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) hates his job and the cubicle to which it confines him. He has also come to despise his tense and frigid wife Carolyn (Annette Bening), to mourn the sullen silence that has descended between him and his teenage daughter Jane (Thora Birch), to loathe the sterile suburbia where they all try to make emotional ends meet. Lester masturbates a lot, especially when he gets to thinking about his daughter's friend Angela (Mena Suvari), the American Beauty of the title...
...also has a dark and problematical double, the weird, smart boy next door. His name is Ricky (Wes Bentley). He deals drugs underneath the crazy nose of his abusive father (Chris Cooper), a retired Marine colonel of the neo-fascist persuasion, and creepily stalks Lester's daughter with his everpresent camcorder, eventually winning her because of the purity of his subversive nature. He is, perhaps, everything Lester might have been, if he had not long ago compromised himself. This also, perhaps, explains why Jane falls in love with...
Shatter stylishly, one must add. The writing by Alan Ball, whose first produced screenplay this is, consistently surprises--not so much in what it says, but in how it says it. He even risks having his story narrated by Lester from beyond the grave and makes Billy Wilder's old trick seem fresh. And the stage's Sam Mendes, also making his first film, dares a touch of expressionism, which we happily indulge, partly because he knows when to stop, mostly because the energy and conviction he and his cast bring to this movie do not permit second thoughts...
DIED. HARRY "SWEETS" EDISON, 83, jazz trumpeter; in Columbus, Ohio. Initially tagged "Sweetie Pie" by saxophonist Lester Young in the 1930s and finally just "Sweets," Edison had a warm, soft trumpet sound that was beloved by bands and singers. He worked with everyone from Count Basie (with whom he played for 12 years) to Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra...