What Comments is 'American Beauty' Making About Modern Society?
             'American Beauty', directed by Sam Mendes, is simply a study of a dysfunctional American Family which reveals the nature of modern suburbia with wit, precision, and invention. Allan Balls script continually explores ideas about what constitutes ordinariness in our lives and what 'beauty' truly is, and why people who have everything, live 'lives of desperation'. Far more importantly, though, is what the film has to say about the American Dream – or rather the American Nightmare.
             American modern society (not too different from New Zealand's own society), is constructed around the notion that happiness is found through material success: a lucrative job, a nice house in a quiet neighbourhood, fancy cars etc. 'American Beauty' doesn't expose this lie – it shows how hideous this lie could be. Screenwriter Alan Ball, says " On of the movies themes is how we have preconceived notions of things, but the truth often turns out to be something we never even considered – where you find beauty might be in the place you least expect it."
             Kevin Spacey (Lester) and Annette Benning (Carolyn) play a couple who, on the surface, seem to have it all. A Perky real estate agent, Benning drives around in a Mercedes, and clips their rose garden using sequesters that match her shoes which Lester comments 'is no mistake'. Lester pulls in sixty grand a year working in marketing, and the couple have a seemingly harmless, typically disaffected teen, Jane, played by Thora Birch.
             Lester, is a typical suburban husband whose life seems to have slipped into a rut. He tells us, 'In less than a year I'll be dead. Of course, I don't know that yet. In a way, I'm dead already.'' He says
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