Alan Ball: Life and Death

Sorry for not posting in so long; I just got back from vacation (and though I went to the Bahamas, there were plenty of times I felt like I was in Wonderland, due to the absolutely irrational way the airlines behaved), and have not had any time to post. Anyway, Alan Ball's American Beauty and Six Feet Under also share themes relating to life and death. Once again, these were explored to much greater depths in SFU, partly because it was a series and partly because they were the MAIN theme, but both worlds had very interesting things to say on the subject.

In American Beauty, the opening narration (after the prologue) reveals that Lester will be dead by the end of the year (and, most likely, the end of the movie), but claims that, in many ways, he's dead already. His wife and daughter walk all over him, he is a mindless drone at work and he has very little to do besides provide for his ungrateful family. His discovery of Angela sparks life back into him, and he rediscovers the joys of living. He quits his job in order to have more free time to have fun. He takes a job at a burger joint in order to have no responsibility. He begins working out, smoking marijuana, buys the car of his dreams, and realizes that life is what you make of it. When Carolyn yells at him for almost spilling beer on their expensive sofa (which derailed their attempt to have sex for the first time in forever), he responds that it is meaningless. They won't take the couch with them when they die (if only I could take this attitude towards shit, as he refers to it; I am getting my "shit" together to move to the city, and you should see how many DVDs and books I have). These activities allow him to be at peace when he is on his deathbed; he realizes that he has seen and done what he wanted to do, especially in the few months leading up to his death, and he is happy knowing that he was able to do life right.

Six Feet Under's title may lead you to believe that it is a show about death, but in reality, it is about life. The Fishers learn about life through the deaths they experience, whether it be the deaths of loved ones or of the people related to their customers. As I said in the last post, sex was a big part of the show, especially since a lot of characters used it to feel alive. But there were other methods of holding onto life. Matriarch Ruth felt dead herself up until a few months before her husband Nathaniel died. It was then that she started seeing a man outside of marriage, and it was more than just the sex that helped her revitalize herself. Hiram, her hairdresser, introduced her to camping, which gave her a hobby. After Hiram, she began dating again (I know, sex is a big part of this, but there is more to dating than sex). Her various suitors each taught her something different about life; Arthur (played by Rainn Wilson, who is even more awesomely creepy than he is on The Office) opened her up to a kind of lost innocence, while George taught her how do live in a mixed family.

The other big thing that is reinforced on Six Feet Under is that everybody dies (SPOILER: which is beautifully illustrated by the series finale). Many of the characters start the series fearing death, but by the end, most have accepted that they will die and learn how to live. I've said this before (and by "said this", I mean, "I've quoted Sandman"), but death defines life, and life is what you make of it. Nearly every episode begins with a death, and the Fishers marvel at the people who lived life to the fullest, and are saddened and perplexed by those who squandered their time on Earth. Each type of person (and there are many more categories, which aren't mutually exclusive) teaches the leads a little something about life. Sometimes the families of the deceased give their two cents about life and death, while other times, the characters envision the dead bodies talking to them. Often, the thoughts and emotions of the lead character speaking to the dead person are projected into the conversation through the dead person's dialogue.

Neither American Beauty nor Six Feet Under holds the definitive answer to the mystery of death or the meaning of life (obviously), but they each offer very interesting ideas on the subjects.

Up next: The internet is really, really great...

Alan Ball: Love and Sex

Sex is an integral part of life, seeing as how that is how conception occurs (ok, science has provided alternatives today, but for millenia, sex was the only option). Ball's works portray sex as a part of life that has varying meanings for different people. For some, it is just something that happens. For others, it is a goal. And while love and sex can go together, there are plenty of times when the idea of love is so divorced from sex that the act becomes self-destructive.

In American Beauty, Lester and Angela hold very different opinions of the subject, despite the fact that we watch them amble towards each other across the film. Angela, an immature teenager who fancies herself wise beyond her years, believes that sex will set her apart from the crowd. Numerous acts of meaningless sex will somehow make her special, will give her a kind of life experience that many desire but few achieve. But this only makes her ordinary (as the truly wise-beyond-his-years Ricky points out to her). Lester, on the other hand, hopes that sex with Angela will make him feel young again, or more alive. Lester has been forced to masturbate for who knows how long, since neither he nor his wife are willing to touch each other, and he hopes that sex with a young and seemingly exciting partner will help reinvigorate his life. Both learn otherwise, as Angela is told off by Ricky and pretty much loses Jane as a friend and Lester finds many new outlets to express himself, in spite of his loveless marriage.

Very few of the characters in American Beauty use sex to express love, or even feel love. Carolyn Burnham cheats on Lester with a rival real estate agent in order to feel more successful (and she probably is as horny as Lester, seeing as how they aren't doing anything together). Frank Fitts' marriage can hardly be called such. His wife is nearly catatonic (the reason for which is never given, but there are heavy implications that it is due to the Colonel's treatment of her). There are pretty much only two loving couples in the film. One is the gay couple that lives next door to the Burnhams, and the other is Jane and Ricky. That relationship got off to a rocky start, but they become truly happy, despite being labeled "freaks" by the more "normal"/"oridnary" Angela. They never have sex in the movie, but if they had, it would have been an expression of love.

Since Six Feet Under was a weekly series that ran for five years, there is much more love and sex to look at. Once again, love and sex aren't exactly synonymous for the Fisher family. Though (I'm not sure I can use the word "healthy" here) couples like David and Keith, Nate and Brenda, and Claire and (I won't give the name) her future husband have sex because they love each other, sex is used to express nearly every emotion there is. The Fishers are repressed, and the family, especially David, who begins the show deep in the closet, often use sex destructively. David cheats on his boyfriends because it's dangerous (best example was when he fucked a Vegas prostitute in a parking lot) and unexpected. Claire tends to go for hopeless losers, most likely because they are projects that she can work on, while Nate, who developed a death phobia due to his father's rather nonchalant take on the subject, has had many conquests (he met Brenda on an airplane and had sex with her in an airport closet) to feel alive. Brenda and her family are the opposite; while sex is a taboo subject at the Fishers' dinner table, the Chenowiths talk about sex as if it were sports. Brenda's mom tells stories about her exploits with her husband, Brenda and her brother are almost too close for comfort, and she eventually develops a kind of sex addiction that spells trouble for her and Nate's wedding plans.

The two more normal characters are Keith, David's lover, and Rico, the Fishers' employee. However, like any human, neither of them are perfect, and some of their views on sex aren't exactly healthy. Rico is homophobic, which extends beyond the act of sex and into love. Over the course of the series, he and David have to work through and around this difference of opinion. And since David isn't the world's only gay man, there are times when this "problem" follows Rico to his private life. Keith, on the other hand, is loving, but can be distant. His home life was more violent than the rest of the characters, and intimacy was a bit of a problem for him. This led to him desiring more adventurous forms of sex, such as threeways, which sometimes put David off (though David was the one who tended to cheat more often). He also disagreed with David over how to express love, which led to a few quarrels between the two. And yet, over the course of the five years, David and Keith remained one of the strongest relationships around, which can be attributed to their verbal honesty.

Up next: Our time on Earth...

American Beauty: Reawakening

American Beauty took the world by storm in 1999. It received nearly universal acclaim for the writing, directing and acting. Unfortunately, the only reason I took (limited) notice of it was because 1999 was the year that the movie American Pie was released, and the two titles sounded similar enough (and shared an actress, but I wouldn't realize that for a few years) to me to associate them. I was a year away from high school, so of the two, American Pie interested me more. Also, the one person I knew who saw American Beauty detested it.

Nine years later (read: this year), I started reading a book on screenwriting and the author made numerous positive references to American Beauty. After years of hearing about how good the film was, and finally getting a few tidbits of information about the film, I decided to finally see it. I don't really remember what I was expecting, but what I saw outshone even my highest beliefs of what the movie could have been. It tells the story of a middle-aged man named Lester who feels that he is dead inside. He has a seemingly perfect life with a beautiful wife and a good-looking daughter. However, neither of them take him seriously; Carolyn, his wife, thinks he is pathetic while Jane suffers from a teenaged perspective of her parents.

When Lester and Carolyn attend a high school basketball game to encourage Jane's cheerleading, Lester sees Jane's friend Angela, a beautiful young girl whose desire to be special may be her greatest flaw, and falls head over heels in lust. From there, Lester decides that he will start living his life the way he always dreamed he would (apparently, these dreams must have come from his teenage years, since he in many ways becomes a teenager... except with more emotional maturity).

This post serves as a kind of overview of the film; rest assured, there is much more going on than I am saying here, but I will reserve the thematic analysis for the upcoming posts when I compare and contrast American Beauty with Six Feet Under. But this simple story of a man reigniting his life is full of ideas regarding the nature of life and death, tolerance, hidden meanings, suburban life and the appearance of perfection. Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes present us with an incredible story, which is brought to life by a cast of wonderful actors who all give award-worthy performances. I can't praise Kevin Spacey enough for his portrayal of Lester, but one of my favorite works in the film is that of Chris Cooper, who gives everything he's got to play Col. Frank Fitts, a retired marine whose struggles with his identity manifest as intolerance and anger.

If you haven't seen American Beauty yet, the point of this post was to get you interested. The upcoming discussions will likely involve a fair amount of spoilers, and I wanted to keep this one fairly clean so I would ruin as little as possible for those who haven't seen it. So see it as soon as possible, because there are a lot of interesting things about the film to deconstruct.

Up next: Deep down...