 How does the author feel about the characters in American Beauty?
Apparently, Lester doesn't realize that snipped roses are garden-variety symbols of castration, or he'd know what he has lost. A hotshot English theater director (his Cabaret revival is still on the boards in New York), Mendes gives the film a patina of New Age lyricism and layer upon layer of visual irony. A merican Beauty is so wittily written and gorgeously directed that you might think you're seeing something archetypal--maybe even the Great American Movie. In movies like sex, lies, and videotape (1989), the protagonist has to put away the video camera to "get real"; in American Beauty , it's Ricky Fitts, the damaged stoner videomaker next door, who sees beauty where nonartists see only horror or nothingness.
 They are stereotypically caricatured.
 They are stale.  They are melodramatic.  They are stereotypically caricatured.  They are fresh.