Analysis of Lester Burnham in The Film American Beauty

Many people come in many different shapes, forms and styles. Each person has a mental habit that can utterly impact their life, which is when people can stay quiet and make themselves feel sad and miserable. While other are willing to bringing themselves joy and freedom and not continuing to tolerate their pain. Lester Burnham from the film American Beauty, by Alan Ball, is a good example on how people can change their lives and make something out of it and be satisfied with themselves instead of being gloomy.

The audience is introduced to Lester Burnham who went from being dead to changing his life to a full 180 turn. The film opens up to the family of the Burnham’s house and then the audience gets to view Lester on how he awakes with a disappointing face and not having the desire to be awake. He even tells his audience “I feel hollow and dead already.” The film even presents his pajamas which look vertically striped the same as what people wear in jail.

As the film continues, the audience comes to an approach with Carolyn, Lester wife, nagging to him about being late for work and giving him a suffocating look to him. At this point the audience can tell that Carolyn takes charge of their relationship. People can even sense coldness towards Lester when he also doesn’t have any respect from his daughter Jane. He was a person in defeat and couldn’t do anything about it. Not even in his family he couldn’t take charge. But it wasn’t long before Lester saw someone that changed his life.

According to the film, Lester daughter, Jane, was in the cheerleading squad. So, Lester took her to school and stayed for her performance that she had. Instead, watching her cheer, there was someone who caught his attention which was Angela, Jane friend. As Lester is distracted by seeing Angela, he begins to fantasizes that “she is dancing for me” and comes up with crazy ideas. That scenario that the audience start to see how Lester seem unpredictable and won't be able to know what he will do next but confronts the audience by explaining “I feel like I've been in a coma for about twenty years, and I'm just waking up”. As his fantasy continues, he now sets a goal to himself to get with Angela and change his life.

As the movie continues Lester becomes very unpredictable through every event. The audience can tell when he convinces himself to make a change in order to chase on Angela, while talking to himself and looking at a mirror. One thing he overheard was when Anglea commented he would date Lester if he would be in shape. So he begins to work out in his garage to become muscular and for Angela to find his new physique attractive. Although there was one thing that really was ironic is that Lester didn’t rebel to take his rightful place in the household. Instead, Lester let’s his wife control everything in the household. What he did doe that was unpredictable was eventually to quit his corporate job, but before he quits. He gets $60,000 from his job through blackmailing and eventually buys himself his dream car. Which are rules that no hero would break to get things done or obtain them as an easy approach. He also starts to smoke marijuana and starts to reminisce and restore his life back in place.

Although there is a plot twist where he becomes aggressive in the film which the audience saw how he insulted his wife “You bloodless, money-grubbing freak”. Instead of her taking it to a negative approach, she took it as a way; that her husband is changing and standing up for himself, this also shows a heroic side of Lester that his confidence is increasing, but at the same time doesn’t like the new car nor him smoking pot and doing things a 42 year old shouldn’t do.

For Lester it was different. The more he was changing the more pleased he was with himself. In fact, the film introduces another character named Ricky, a teenager, Lester bonds with pretty quickly though the whole film. Given Lester's willingness to pursue Angela and to be with her. The two end up smoking together and Lester is impressed when Ricky's boss catches them. Instead of trying to hide or apologize for doing drugs, Ricky tells the boss off. Lester admires Ricky's attitude and definitely wants to try to copy it.

After all the changing that Lester did he tells his audience “I’m just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose”, which justifies on how Lester was able to increase his confidence and belief. Even though, there was a moment where Lester had come upon a wrong turn. Ricky's Dad, Frank, gets the mistaken impression that Ricky and Lester are having a relationship. But the reality is that Ricky is just selling Lester pot. When Frank goes over to confront him, the audience thinks he will go out of control. But since he expressed is actually homophobic, he then surprises the audience and himself too, by trying to kiss Lester. In those scenes it was ironic on Frank claims to hate homosexuals but is one himself.

Unfortunately, right on the heel turn for Lester to get what he desired before his death, he was able to get busy with Angela. Lester comes to his senses and realizes that the woman he's been fantasizing about isn't a woman at all, but a young girl. He feels happy he was able to get where he wanted to be but eventually gets killed at the end of the film from Frank for knowing his secret.

American Beauty presented Lester as a good example for people to follow and try to change their lives. Every scene of the movie, the audience was able to acknowledge Lester behavior goes from soft-spoken mumble to a straightforward voice. He was able to take action on his life to become more of a stud, hero and changed his behavior to an alpha male before getting killed which were the achievement he obtained.