American Beauty reads with a vivacity that few screenplays possess these days. All at once witty, sardonic, insightful, and melancholy, Alan Ball's story plays like a caricature of humanity at its best and worst. But mostly its best. The movie is a transcendent piece of cinema magic, but in its raw, printed form, this script becomes a triumph of great story-telling...which is, after all, the most often overlooked element of modern film.

"Look closer" is the tag line of American Beauty...an endearingly complex combination of two words which drives home the concept at the heart of the story. It is a story of observation. From the first image we read, that of young Jane Burnham through the eyes of her boyfriend's video camera, it becomes apparent that life is only as good as we see it. From the grainy intensity of Jane's deadpan sadness to the ethereal, glossed-over facade of suburban upper-middle-class America....the world of Lester Burnham.

Lester Burnham. 42. Husband, father. Disenchanted, dissatisfied, despised by a society where he fits in all too well. Lester is the centerpiece of the story, the catalyst for all action and reaction. His sudden decision to change his life (prompted in part by an illicit sexual attraction to his daughter's best friend) turns into an odyssey of personal discovery, personal euphoria, and, ultimately, personal destruction.

Comes the cohort. Ricky Fitts, a new next-door neighbor, is the son of a mentally inert mother and an overbearing, radically conservative military father. Ricky helps Lester into his adolescent-reawakening. In one particularly effective scene, the two smoke pot behind the building of a real estate business party, and Lester witnesses as Ricky quits his job, point-blank, no questions asked. "I think you just became my personal hero," Lester says in awe and reverence. And it gets more interesting from here.

To make matters worse, Lester's career-obsessed, straight laced, and bitingly tactless wife Carolyn enters into a clandestine affair with her business rival, "The Real Estate King" Buddy. And to top it off, daughter Jane becomes involved with Ricky, a love story which evolves over the course of American Beauty into a tale so honest, realistic, and pure that it seems like you're spying on the transcript of someone else's life.

About halfway through American Beauty, Ricky and Jane share their first walk home together. It is a crucial turning point in their relationship. They witness a funeral passing.

RICKY: Have you ever known anybody who died?

JANE: No. (a beat) have you?

RICKY: No, but I did see this homeless woman who froze to death once. Just laying there on the sidewalk. She looked really sad.

(They watch the funeral cars pass)

RICKY: I got that homeless woman on video.

JANE: Why would you film that?

RICKY: Because it was amazing.

JANE: What was amazing about it?

RICKY: When you see something like that, it's like God is looking right at you, just for a second. and if you're careful, you can look right back.

JANE: And what do you see?

RICKY: Beauty.

....and at this point the movie becomes so many different things that it cannot help but be a mirror of real life, albeit a wildly overblown representation. But it is one of the few times when wildly overblown becomes completely accurate. Alan Ball writes his characters with such depth and humanity, even the most despicable of the story's players. In a scene near the story's tear-jerking, but oddly life-affirming ending, Ricky's father, Colonel Fitts (referred to with striking bluntness in the script as 'Colonel'), confronts a spiritually and physically transformed Lester Burnham in the garage. Having just unnecessarily reprimanded his son for being a homosexual, the conventionally tethered man stands, soaked by the rain, in the Burnhams' driveway. I will not detail the scene, but when a screenwriter can make even the despicable Colonel Fitts a sympathetic, depth-ful, mysterious character, there is something to be said.

Also of note is Jane's friend, otherwise known as Lester's fantasy girl, Angela, whose character also achieves a level of human decency at the story's end. What makes American Beauty a triumph is its projection of truth, and its sudden character twists which are just as shocking and believable as those in real life. The dynamic description of Alan Ball is inspiring, chilling, and empathic. As illustrated in this, the final monologue by Lester Burnham at the film's end:

LESTER (voice-over): I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me...but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst....

EXT. -ROBIN HOOD TRAIL - DAY

(We're flying once again over Robin Hood Trail, ascending slowly)

LESTER (voice-over): ...and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...(amused) You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry....

FADE TO BLACK

LESTER (voice-over): you will someday.

ISBN: 155704404X
Edition: Paperback