Word: burnhams
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...start of the movie, Lester Burnham (a brilliant Kevin Spacey), trapped and overly-insulated, leads a meaningless life with no sense of power or self-esteem; bogged down with particulars, he no longer knows how and when to express the proper emotions and can no longer communicate with his daughter or wife. Burnham eventually snaps this spell by developing a strong sexual fantasy for his daughter's 17-year-old friend, triggering an entirely hedonistic lifestyle in which he buys whatever he wants and smokes pot all day. This is a direct reaction to his prior condition of too much...
...power of Burnham's fantasy comes from a deep sexual frustration, which has been stimulated so greatly that it can no longer be satisfied by physical means; he wants to consume everything (Mendes also emphasizes the relationship between sexual frustration and violence throughout the film, having a character compare having an orgasm to shooting a gun, and another turn his suppressed sexual desire into violent action). When it comes time to perform his fantasy, however, Burnham realizes how undesirable it truly is, how misguided he has been. In the end, his solipsistic hedonism is just as unfulfilling as his prior...
...Burnham's wife (Annette Bening), on the other hand, has taken a career-centered path to happiness, hoping to gain power and meaning by climbing up the real-estate business ladder. She sacrifices everything for career and seems to resent her daughter and husband, whose existences have impeded her upward mobility. This, too, of course, leads not to happiness but only more frustration and more powerlessness...
...Then where, among the frustrations and disappointments of American life, can one find some kind of happiness? Mendes offers an answer in the character of Ricky (excellently played by Wes Bentley), Burnham's teenage neighbor. A strange outcast, Ricky videotapes everything "because it is beautiful." Beauty, for him, lies in stripping away any layer from a thing until it is totally naked. He uses his video camera to get to the essence of a subject. That is, he struggles to see things as they are, while his parents and neighbors distract themselves with various illusions. Right before his death, Burnham...
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...