American Beauty (1999)

I didn’t really know what to expect going in. I never read any plot summaries and aside from the famous rose ceiling shot hadn’t seen anything else from the movie. I was not expected for that transcendent of an experience.

some of that comes from knowing nothing going into a movie and being able to just fully immerse yourself into this film, but this film did that in a way that I haven’t been captured in so long. The world that Sam Mendes built is simultaneously dark, disturbing, beautiful, romantic, terrifying abstract, profound, harsh. In Other words, it is the very real world

The premise was kind of ridiculous, and for the first half hour I didn’t understand why this movie was rated so highly, and was a favorite for so many. But as the narrative kept unfolding and new elements were added to each character and each storyline (not to mention the eerily fitting lilting score over relatively banal and mundane scenes, and some amazing cinematography) I felt myself staring at the screen, unable to look away. Just carried by the narrative and the directorial power of this movie.

It is a gross movie, and it shows how truly messed up We as human beings can be. Driven by voyeurism, greed, regret, inner trauma, power, lust, etc. the way that it depicted all this so powerfully and by the end even so beautifully was something I was just captured by. Watershed moment of a movie viewing experience