Word: lifes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...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 workaday life...
...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...
...clear that if I maxed out all my cards, I would never in my life be able to pay it off," he jokes...
...narrator's (Norton's) yuppie disillusionment. Poor Edward Norton--his character isn't even given a name. Food good reason, since his identity consists of what furniture to buy, what shoes match his suit, and which dinette set best fits his non-existent personality. In this yuppie's life, IKEA is synonymous with orgasm. Enter Tyler Durden. Brad Pitt takes on the challenging role of this American psycho-- a soap salesman who lives as a squatter, steals a sportscar one day and ditches it the next, and takes random nightshift jobs to survive. Tyler wants "freedom" from yuppie existence...