American Beauty: The Movie

I DVRed American Beauty: the movie made in 1999 with Kevin Spacey and Annette Benning tonight. While it finished recording I watched the last Tonight Show with Jay Leno and though how ironic that Jay Leno ends tonight and General Motors ends Monday(at least as we have known it for almost a century). You know, Jay and all his cars and stuff as a collector.

Anyway, I was watching parts of American Beauty and remembering how much I felt like the character played by Kevin Spacey at times during my life. Y'know the hopeless kind of married feeling with kids and all where all your dreams and fantasies have to die to keep your marriage going and your kids having a future. The sacrifice of everything you wanted and believed in has to die for your kids. And what is even worse in a way the sacrifice of everything your wife wanted in life as well.

Both Keven Spacey's character and Annette Benning's character are in hell, suburban hell. Their daughter couldn't possibly understand how difficult her parents lives are really. She's just too young to see how it got this way.

I bet there are millions of suburbanite families just like this one throughout the United States and world who identify with this family.

However, at this point I have a different reaction to it than I did 10 years ago. Being ten years older now, 61 instead of 51 when it first came out I see it differently. What is the most sad about this movie is that the husband and wife cannot see each other as they did when they first got together and married. They actually are a good match for each other. The problem is that neither of them emotionally matured in a healthy way. They both mentally fought and killed all their emotions for the marriage until there just was nothing left. The wife won't be worth anything without the husband. She married the right guy. He married the right girl. She won't miss him until he's dead and maybe she is just so emotionally screwed up that she won't even miss him then. They married the right people and then they and life broke them both because they didn't keep the child inside themselves alive. I'm not saying to be childish. But without keeping your childlike person alive there is really no point to staying alive unless it is a complete sacrifice for your children's future. And even then, is this the example you want to set for your kids? Do you want their lives as miserable as yours has been? Parents all over the world are always giving the message, "Do what I say not what I do." However, what children receive and pattern after often is a close to perfect emulation of their parents. Oh, they may eliminate the obvious parts that they didn't like but generally children mimic their parents both as children and as adults.