This movie IS American, if not Hollywoodian. So that's the bad part. It is so fscking American. Not French, not European. It drags out of everyone anything that one can drag. Comedy, tragedy, fun, blood, you name it. Pandering to the galleys. Hate this.
In the background, however, something else plays along. Everyday life stories. Concentrated, if not distilled, but everyday life. Marriage. Disappointment. Sexual frustration. Borderline craziness. But everything hidden carefully behind well-devised normality, one that is anything but normal. Nobody in this movie, sympathetic or not, in the end turns out to be a freak on the inside; propped up by an outwardly stable construction. And this reminds me of the master of this topic, Luis Bunuel.
Many didn't like him, not the communists and neither the fascists, because nobody would come out of his stories as the good one. Each and every person would fight for his own, in his own little prison cell in which he fights his own insanity. And so here. Lester Burnham isn't better, really. He is advantageous only because of the situation that allows him to come out slightly better. Angela, the most empty person in the movie finally concedes to still be a virgin. So he can't actually sleep with her; as much as he would have wished. He is kind of hero only, because someone mistook him.
Everyone tries to pretend to be good, or do good, like in the Angel Exterminator by Bunuel. To give an example. And yet without the least chance to escape from his tightly fitting corset.
Do not we all betray ourselves when we pretend to be good, a start a happy marriage, childhood, parenthood, neighborhood, work relation? When, in the end, we end up as career-minded real estate agents, masturbating to the thoughts of our kids friends, fighting our dads by playing out just the opposite life of what our dads were hoping for, becoming paralyzed by overwhelming husbandry, exploiting work relationships, lying to one another for career reasons, threaten with blackmail, are inconsiderate to our partners' wishes?
Not 'nobody is perfect'. Rather make it 'everyone is an axxhole, deep down inside'. One way or another. Despite all intentions.
In the background, however, something else plays along. Everyday life stories. Concentrated, if not distilled, but everyday life. Marriage. Disappointment. Sexual frustration. Borderline craziness. But everything hidden carefully behind well-devised normality, one that is anything but normal. Nobody in this movie, sympathetic or not, in the end turns out to be a freak on the inside; propped up by an outwardly stable construction. And this reminds me of the master of this topic, Luis Bunuel.
Many didn't like him, not the communists and neither the fascists, because nobody would come out of his stories as the good one. Each and every person would fight for his own, in his own little prison cell in which he fights his own insanity. And so here. Lester Burnham isn't better, really. He is advantageous only because of the situation that allows him to come out slightly better. Angela, the most empty person in the movie finally concedes to still be a virgin. So he can't actually sleep with her; as much as he would have wished. He is kind of hero only, because someone mistook him.
Everyone tries to pretend to be good, or do good, like in the Angel Exterminator by Bunuel. To give an example. And yet without the least chance to escape from his tightly fitting corset.
Do not we all betray ourselves when we pretend to be good, a start a happy marriage, childhood, parenthood, neighborhood, work relation? When, in the end, we end up as career-minded real estate agents, masturbating to the thoughts of our kids friends, fighting our dads by playing out just the opposite life of what our dads were hoping for, becoming paralyzed by overwhelming husbandry, exploiting work relationships, lying to one another for career reasons, threaten with blackmail, are inconsiderate to our partners' wishes?
Not 'nobody is perfect'. Rather make it 'everyone is an axxhole, deep down inside'. One way or another. Despite all intentions.