美与人生

——《美国丽人》影评

《美国丽人》是由导演萨姆?曼德斯19xx年执导的一部揭露和讽刺美国平静生活表面下的诸多矛盾的电影。为我们提出了关于美与生活的真正意义的思考——什么才是世界上最美的东西，怎样的生活才是真正值得我们去追求的生活？

影片一开始便是：一个女孩对他的父亲抱怨，并且企图想杀死他。这不禁揭示了目前所普遍存在的“父母与子女的代沟问题”。然后便是主人公（布达利）的旁白：“我四十二岁。再有不到一年就会死去。当然，那会我还不知道。不过从某种意义上说，我已经死了。这是我的郊区，这是我的街道，这是我的家??”场景：笔直而干净的街道，两旁挺拔的树，洁白的房子??一切充满了平静，和谐，正是人们所向往的生活。然而，对多少的人而言，这种和谐与平静仅仅是表面的现象，他们被压抑着思想，抑制着欲望，生活就如同大海中航行的船只，没有方向，没有目的，味同嚼蜡，乏味而不值一提。平静的表面下掩藏着烦躁，不安，沮丧，伪善??结局便是死亡。

影片以莱斯特一家的生活矛盾为主线来展开。

由凯文?史派西扮演的主人公布达利一直过着平静的生活，然而这种生活却是极其的乏味。在家里他的妻子总认为他没用，在任何方面都对他实行专制独裁，为了维持家庭的平静，他一再的容忍着妻子，即使是他一直关心的女儿此时也瞧不起他，远离他；而在工作方面，他安于本分,做自己该做的事，即使是知道了上司用公司的钱召妓，仅仅视而不见。在这里布达利是软弱的，面对毫无激情的婚姻和无意义的职业生活，他没有勇气去抗争，而是选择了隐忍。现实中又有多少这样的布利达？

一个完全沉浸于金钱的女人，她将身边的一切物质看的无比昂贵，那就像她的生命，这样的女人是可怕——布达利的妻子布嘉莲，这个有着坚强外表而内心却无比脆弱的女人是拜金主义者典型的代表，她认为她提供了家中的物质而理应成为主宰，对家人冷漠，唯有从养花中寻找和填充自己的意义和美，能使她激动的唯有比她拥有更多财福的地产商以及更多的财富。

珍妮（布达利的女儿），具有强烈的叛逆精神的女孩，她认为父母不关心她，而疏远他们，甚至憎恨。

家庭的矛盾正在逐步的酝酿，生活依然乏味而平静地进行着。

当布达利第一眼看见安吉，导演采用了夸张而巧妙的手法：布利达好像见到安吉化身为玫瑰，在召唤他，而此刻世界只有他俩，心中燃起了二十年来从未有过的激情与欲望，正如主人公所说：“我仿佛昏睡了二十年，直到现在才醒过来”。情节峰回路转。

欲望与激情的力量是无穷的，正是这种欲望与激情让布达利返老还童，当然还有力奇对工作的态度，彻底的改变了布达利的生活态度——觉醒。为了得到安吉青睐，他开始健身。对生活他做出了反击，辞职，然后却在当起了服务员，买自己梦寐以求的跑车，吸食大麻，不在容忍妻子对他的无休止的斥责，开始大喊大叫，吃饭时摔盘子，要挟妻子。与之前的形象判若两人，这一切使他欣喜万分。

布达利的改变无疑致使原有的家庭矛盾激化。面对丈夫的苏醒，布嘉莲开始了她的堕落生活，不再关心家庭，而是沉溺于与房地产商的情感纠葛中。他对安吉的喜欢使得女儿更加厌恶他，开始和力奇接触。

布达利最终死于退役军官力奇的父亲的手中，这位自身有同性恋倾向的人一直通过表现出厌恶同性恋来掩饰自己，因误解儿子与布达利的行为而认为他是同性恋，最终表现出本性，又因为被布达利拒绝最终恼羞成怒杀死了他。

最后的画面：布达利看着全家福含笑而去“我为自己愚蠢而渺小的生活自豪”??正如影片开头所说那样，布达利走向死亡。

萨姆?曼德斯采用夸张，铺陈，旁白，灰阶背景的情节，揭露了平静生活下的种种现实，欲望，欺骗，伪善，金钱，毒品，同性恋??在告诉我们一个发生普通家庭里的一个故事的同时也警示人们生活到底是什么，生命的价值又在哪里，什么才是美？

对物质的渴望成为了生活的全部，金钱统治了人们的思想，再没有真诚的感情，审美观完全变为生理的感受，虚伪充斥着整个社会，人们却不觉愚蠢而是自我陶醉，正如安吉所说：“做人最怕平凡，没有什么比平凡更可怕”，这是多么畸形和扭曲的人生观，她永远活在被人的眼光里。

何谓美？何谓生活?

只有力奇才是美与希望的灵魂。这个十八岁的男孩靠贩卖毒品赚钱，他总是拿着相机，寻找着身边美丽的事物。在安吉魅惑的身体与珍妮安静的微笑中，他

果断选择了后者，他帮助珍妮发现了她的美丽，使她变得自信；他会拍一只死去的鸟，并且认为它很美。他的审美观总是不为他人所理解，以至被看作神经病。力奇宽容，即使是被父亲暴打，他任然认为他是好人，他最终逃离了家庭的束缚，他获得了自由。

力奇拍的最美丽的东西——一只白色的塑料袋在风中飞舞，像是跳舞一样，自由的飞舞。自然而朴素，这种空灵的手法让影片更引人深思??即是在告诉我们美丽就在我们身边，只要我们愿意去发现，平凡亦是一种耐人寻味的生活，重点在于希望。生活中并不缺少美，只是缺少发现美的眼睛。

第二篇：美国丽人 American Beauty 英文影评

美国丽人 American Beauty 英文影评

Nothing beats death for establishing a detached, omniscient point of view, and from the very beginning of Sam Mendes's haunting and accomplished debut feature (and one of the year's first significant films), it's made clear that its hero, middle-aged, middle-class lost soul Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a goner. Lester's flashback voiceover narration has the sardonic serenity of the beyond, an anarchistic wisdom as he observes himself jerking off in the shower ("This will be the highlight of my day), spies on wife Carolyn (a strident and fragile Annette Bening) tending the title roses ("See how her clogs match the handles of her pruning shears? It's not a coincidence."), or looks in on sullen and unhappy daughter Jane (Thora Birch, with soulful, accusing eyes) surfing the Internet for breast augmentation sites ("I'd tell her things get better, but I don't want to lie"). His secret? "In less than a year, I'll be dead. . . . But in a sense, I'm dead already."

Who actually kills Lester is a mystery. Is it Jane, who's shown on video saying her dad is a "lame-o" who should be put out of his misery? Carolyn, who takes out her frustrations at the shooting range? Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper), the new neighbor with the militant right-wing views and the extensive firearms collection? In the end, it makes no difference.

As for Lester's spiritual death, it's one of the most common themes in American literature and film, and Mendes and first-time writer Alan Ball deserve credit for bringing this hollow man to life. Mostly, though, it's Spacey's movie, as his impeccable timing, coy superciliousness and rueful knowingness provide the tone and tension that illuminate it. Like the gimpy loser he played in The Usual Suspect, his Lester starts out unimpressively, embarrassing himself in front of his wife and daughter both in social settings and at the dinner table. But Spacey's diabolical smile suggests that his days as suburban doormat adrift in a '90s updating of John Cheever's white-collar wasteland (the film is reminiscent of that writer's "The Country Husband") will not be for long.

His rebirth begins at a high-school basketball game where he and Carolyn, in a misconceived attempt to be better parents, watch Jane run through a new dance routine with the cheerleading squad. His patient gaze changes to ardor as the camera singles out the nubile features of Angela (vivid newcomer Mena Suvari), whose insinuating smile seems meant just for him. Mendes, however, overplays the moment: a spotlight shines on Angela, everyone else in the gym disappears, and she opens her blouse to unleash a cascade of rose petals, the hallmark of Lester's fantasy sequences, and one of the film's less compelling metaphors for beauty.

Mendes is more restrained in Lester's second epiphany, when at a shindig for Carolyn's real-estate job he slips out back with Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley, like a laconic Christian Slater with spooky presence), the colonel's son, who's catering the affair. Tiny figures framed by a blank wall and the asphalt of a parking lot, the two get loopy and hilarious on the dope that is the real source of Ricky's income. "I think you're become my new personal hero," says Lester when Ricky quits and tells his intruding boss to get lost.

In effect Ricky becomes the film's hero, too, since he embodies the youth, idealism, and poetry that Lester abandoned along with his dream of owning a 1970 Firebird. Ricky also embodies much of the visual sense that distinguishes the style of this director (who's known for his striking stage productions of Cabaret and The Blue Room). Oppressed by his fascist dad (one of the film's few stereotypes that fails to transcend itself), Ricky buys video equipment with his dope money and shoots random moments of morbid beauty, such as a dead bird, a whirling plastic bag in a leaf-littered alley, and Lester's bruised-petal daughter. It's the beginning of a courtship between Ricky and Jane, and the interplay of self-conscious imagery, voyeurism, and desire recalls Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape and Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love.

Lester, meanwhile, pumps iron while stoned to get buff for Angela, extorts a year's severance pay from his soul-destroying job, and is mostly amused when his wife has an affair with Buddy Kane (a graying Peter Gallagher, looking like a monstrous fusion of George Hamilton and Michael Dukakis), the real-estate king. The details of the dead man's ultimate fate are a bit of a letdown, but as he posthumously notes, it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world, and in that regard, this near-masterpiece is true to its title.