American Beauty

Sam Mendes's 1999 film depicting the suburban crisis of Lester Burnham — an American man's midlife revolt against his hollow suburban existence — winning five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director — one of the defining cultural statements of American suburban alienation.

Provides the most commercially successful cinematic critique of American suburban life — American Beauty's account of the violence, alienation, and unfulfilled desire lurking beneath the manicured lawns of American prosperity entered the cultural vocabulary as the definitive image of the post-Cold War American condition.