Really Ricky?

         When Ricky was younger, his father wanted to give him discipline and order in his life because Ricky was not necessarily the most pristine child. He was sent to military school, but was kicked out soon after. When he returned home, his father beat him for getting kicked out. To add even more fuel to the fire, when Ricky went back to school the next day, another student told him he had a bad haircut, which provoked Ricky to assault the kid nearly to death. Most people that meet him call him "weird" and a "psycho", but he is eventually lucky enough to meet Lester's daughter, who is repulsed at first, but gradually she grows to fall in love with him. In terms of the existential ideas conveyed in the film,ricky exhibits both quietism and heroism.Existentialists would say that Ricky is not an inherently bad person, only that he has performed some bad actions. In fact, Ricky claims that he is constantly searching for the "beauty" in the world. He is always under the scrutiny of others, and yet he continues acting on his own accord. He is also seen video taping all of his encounters for most of the movie, including the clip which is shown in this excerpt.
       This scene shows Ricky explaining why he videotaped a plastic bag in the wind for 15 minutes. He describes the experience as if "the plastic bag were dancing or playing" with him, driven by an ineffable "beauty" in the world. I found this very related to Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism as a whole. Only Ricky was there to witness and experience this beauty, and so he feels obliged to document and capture this scene.

Theatrical Trailer

Ricky Fitts

And Then There's Ricky Fitts...

                 Once all has been introduced, the scene that truly precipitates the rest of the film is the introduction to the Burnham’s new next-door neighbor – the Fitts. Lester is clearly having an awful time at one of his wife’s social gatherings, and so he agrees to go outside and smoke weed with one of the cocktail waiters. He then learns that the waiter is actually Ricky Fitts, the son of the neighboring family, when Ricky quits his job after being asked to come inside and work. 

                 Ricky Fitts is the most interesting character in the film. His father is an aggressively homophobic war veteran and his mother seems to have Alzheimer's or some other memory-impairing illness that renders her extremely unresponsive. Prior to living with them, he had been living in a mental institution for two years after his father had him institutionalized. 

A Study In Existentialism

Intro

          The movie begins with a home video recording of a girl complaining about her father. The man recording the video then asks her if she would like for him to kill her father, to which she responds, “Yes”. However, the scene then fades to black and the narrative begins. While the camera pans over a banal suburban area, Lester Burnham, the main character played by Kevin Spacey, introduces himself and his life very monotonously and precisely – perhaps to reflect the similar nature of these entities. Lester has been working for a magazine agency for fourteen years and is utterly miserable at his job. He is in his early forties and has a great deal of tension at home with both his wife and only daughter.

Info

         One of the most fascinating films of all time, American Beauty was directed by Sam Mendes and is also perhaps one of the most interesting stories ever told. It is seamlessly woven with existential ideas and these ideas are conveyed in the subtlest yet most powerful of ways. Throughout the movie, each character truly becomes a sum of his or her actions and the viewer remains enthralled along each one’s journey of self-realization.