America Beauty (Sam Mendes)

This paper is an examination of the film, American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes, looking at one of the Oedipal structures in the film and considering why this particular relationship holds such fascination. The relationship studied is that of the Fitts family. The father, a career Marine, rules the family with a strict hand, but he is unable to control the fact that his discipline has turned his wife into a nearly catatonic figure and his son into an extremely successful drug dealer and voyeur. By the film's end, the son has rebelled against the father and managed to destroy him, in a remarkable completion of the Oedipus myth, as reinterpreted by Freud. The story is compelling and involving, in part because of some exquisite performances that help to illuminate the complex psychology of the participants and in part because the story, even though extreme, is so universal at its dramatic heart.

Colonel Frank Fitts, United States Marine Corps (Chris Cooper), is a tightly wound man. He collects guns, insists on a perfectly kept house, and keeps a watchful eye on his only son, Ricky (Wes Bentley). His most prized possession is a single piece of china, a plate that was once part of the official china service of the Nazi party.

His wife, Barbara (Allison Janney), spends most of her days sitting almost motionless, staring at the cold, well-appointed home. At night, she sits next to her husband on the couch in the living room, watching black and white army comedies from th

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the prophecies of the authorities that foretell the son's eventual mastery over the father. He tries to keep the son ignorant of his destiny, but it is fulfilled despite the king's best efforts: the son returns in disguise, proves his intelligence, kills his father without knowing what he has done, and marries the woman who turns out to be his mother. In Freud's reading, the murder and the marriage are unconscious longings, never conscious or carried out but driving the male personality throughout his life. Although at one point Colonel Fitts is in charge (and still is, presumably, in command of his men), his son has already begun to rise up and become more powerful than the father. Psychiatrists, teachers, and other authorities, those whose word put Ricky away and whose word also pronounced him strong enough to return to mainstream society, must have warned Fitts about the kinds of deeds of which Ricky may be capable; Fitts certainly watches his son closely, full of his own suspicion that they may be right. For all this watchfulness, however, Ricky's disguise holds. He outwits his father, allowing Fitts to see the son he believes he has become instead of the clever, self-assured, commanding individual that Ricky actually i

Category: Film - A