When looking back at the many great, highly influential films that were released in 1999, it feels particularly strange thatSam Mendes’ romantic dramaAmerican Beautywas selected as the best film of the year by the Academy Awards.This was the same yearasFight Club, Magnolia, Election, Eyes Wide Shut, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix,andThe Insideramong others. Why was a strange, somewhat amusing melodrama selected to represent the year’s best achievements?American Beautyis a work of satire that was perhaps too good for its time. Many viewers simply viewed the film as a straight-up melodrama, and thus judged the film quite differently from what Mendes and screenwriterAlan Ballactually intended. Perhaps, determining whetherAmerican Beautywas actually “serious” would have been even more challenging had Mendes included some of the odd deleted scenes that ended the film on an even more dour note.
How Does ‘American Beauty’ End?
American Beautyfollows the lonely advertising executive Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), who begins to suffer a midlife crisis after he realizes that he’s no longer happy with his materialistic wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening). Lester begins to yearn for his days as a younger man when he felt more free, and begins to fixate on his young daughter Jane’s (Thora Birch) life—particularly, Jane’s best friend, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), who generates his affection. As Lester begins to fantasize about a different life, Jane begins to fall in love with her idiosyncratic neighbor, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley). Ricky is an existential philosopher often deemed a “weirdo” by bullies at school.
However, Ricky’s enemies aren’t just in class; they’re at home, too. Ricky’s father, Frank (Chris Cooper), is a very strict former colonel, and has very specific views on what a traditional family unit should look like. Although initially Lester, Carolyn, and Jane seem to resemble the “nuclear family unit” that Frank admires, he grows disturbed when he realizes that Lester is bringing new ideas to their secluded community. This inspires Ricky to flee his father’s home and seek a new life in New York City with Jane. Meanwhile, Lester admits his feelings to Angela, but then decides to not act on his feelings once he has the opportunity. While Ricky and Jane appear to be set on their journey, Angela is taken aback and shocked by Lester’s proposal. She reveals that her supposed promiscuity was merely based on reputation. Lester realizes that Angela was nothing but a fantasy to him, and that they never truly belonged together.
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In the original ending, the film closes on a series of dramatic ironies. A heartbroken Lester is comforted by Frank, who makes romantic advances on him. Lester is shocked to realize that the aging colonel—who often made homophobic comments about his son—‚has actually struggled to admit his own sexuality. As Lester finds himself at peace, looking at an old family photo and realizing what he has,he is shot in the back of his headby Frank. The film ends where it begins; Lester’s narration overshadows a wide shot of his neighborhood, and observes how different things are now.
The Alternate ‘American Beauty’ Ending Was Way Darker
One of the reasons thatAmerican Beauty’s ending works so well is that it is inherently deceptive; Lester is not intended to be a likable character, as he judges, abuses, and deceives everyone around him to account for his own failings. It’s ironic that Lester’s only insights come in his final moments, when he realizes that he’s just as guilty of judging other people as they are of judging him. Framing Lester’s death as a tragedy (complete with a melodramatic voice-over narration by Spacey) makes the satirical point even clearer.Mendes expertly utilizesa stunning bit ofThomas Newman’s original score to make the scene even more melodramatic. It’s a fascinating, albeit widely misunderstood way to conclude the story.
However, Ball and Mendesoriginally had a very different ending in mind. Rather than closing with Lester’s death and leaving the rest of the characters’ fates up to viewers’ interpretation, the film reveals that Ricky and Jane are blamed for Lester’s death. Ricky had been filming Lester’s activities from afar, and the courts used these recordings as evidence to bring against him in. The happy life that Ricky and Jane imagined for themselves also ends in tragedy—in the moments before they were set to take off together for an unknown future, they are locked up and arrested for a crime that they didn’t commit. It’s an even more downbeat way to end a film that wasn’t that uplifting in the first place.
The issue with endingAmerican Beautythis way is that it diverts attention from what the film is actually satirizing. The film reveals that Lester’s narrow-minded thinking has warped his view of the world, and that characters like Carolyn, Angela, Frank, Ricky, and Jane are much more complex than he initially dismissed them as. The film is viewed through Lester’s warped view of the world, and thus the melodramatic ending works as a way to conclude his section of the story. Although Lester has now learned that the people in his life are much more than just caricatures, he still sees himself as the “main character.” His death is only consequential in the other characters’ lives because of the inadvertent impact that a small-town murder has on their future plans.
The courtroom scenes could have misinterpreted this point.American Beautyisn’t really a tragedy because Lester isn’t a good person, and hyper-focusing on his death would have been a mistake. There’s also a genuine beauty to Ricky and Jane’s future activities being open to interpretation; perhaps now that they both know the truth about their parents, Ricky and Jane may be able to succeed where their folks could not. In the end, Mendes made the right decision to endAmerican Beautythe way he did, as the additional tragedy wouldn’t have made the film any more effective.
