Friday, 25 October 2013

If I said I have to leave for New York tonight, would you come with me?

Today in Media, we watched American Beauty. I had my suspicions, because even though it won several awards, so did The King's Speech.

But actually, it turned out to be one of the best movies I've watched in school ever. I think History Boys beats, though.

While the main plot is about Kevin Spacey having a mid-life crisis, there's an entire subplot about a boy called Ricky Fitts.

Ricky is just intense, but mostly harmless.
Ricky, as you can see, loves filming shit. He finds beauty everywhere. I really like him. We think he's a little psychotic at the start, but he turns out okay. But honestly, I always thought he seemed interesting, even when he didn't have a name and was just filming the girl in the film.

But oddly, he really reminded me and my best friend of Sylar, from Heroes. There's something about how they both move in an incredibly precise manner. Every single action has a purpose, even if it isn't that obvious. And they both have the same intensely staring dark eyes, where you don't know if you want to run or get closer. True, Ricky isn't actually a bad guy, he's just got repressive parents and a habit of dealing drugs.

But his relationship with the girl turns out fine, and they're good together, I think. They're both not very happy with their family situations, and they live next door to each other.

Sylar is both terrifying and beautiful, which is a bad combination.
Ricky has this scene with the girl, who I think is called Jean, where he's just showing her footage of a plastic bag in the wind, surrounded by leafs that are blowing around and stuff. He says it's the moment he realised true beauty. He also filmed a woman who'd died in the street, frozen up without enough layers, because he believed that in that image, God was staring out. And that if you tried hard, got the right angle, you could stare right back.

Ricky is one of those characters that you find both fascinating and a little worrying at the same time.

But that line, the line of my title, it speaks volumes to me. He's been told to leave his house, told not to come back, and he has the money from dealing, so he asks his girlfriend to run off with him. And you know what? She's so in love that she agrees. Those are the relationships I think people need to see more. The kind where the people involved will do absolutely anything for each other, will drop everything and run away just because their partner needs to.

Despite a strange ending, and some weird scenes, I actually really liked this film, and I might end up owning it in the future. Like Withnail & I, or The Good Night, or Donnie Darko, it leaves a lot of questions, and a lot of ideas that make you feel like you should maybe do something that day, something good, something for you.

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