* Ricky is 18, a legal adult, and has 30 grand in the bank, Why does he put up with his Dad's abuse? He could have left any time after his 18th birthday.
** His subplot in the movie is basically about him reaching his breaking point with his dad and deciding to do just that, remember, so presumably things just hadn't gotten to the point where he'd reached his breaking point. Also, he seems relatively close to his mother, so might not have wanted to abandon her.
* The ending. Lester may have escaped into eternity with a little smile and a moment of epiphany, but the lives of his family and neighbors are about to become a living hell.
** Creepily, his final narration indicates his belief that whatever hell anyone goes through, everyone will ultimately be happy...when they're dead like him.
** I get the feeling that when the dust clears, they'll all be better for it. I feel like they were so detached from real life, maybe that will bring them back and learn to appreciate things the way he had. At least, that's what I hope.
** An early draft of the screenplay (dig around, it's online) is actually bookended with scenes showing his daughter and her boyfriend behind bars and on trial for Lester's murder, the main evidence being the video footage shown at the very start of the film. I think in one draft at the end they're even found guilty. The Mena Suvari character is a key witness, gets "discovered" and ends up a TV star on a Baywatch-style show.
** That's something else that bugged me: the talked-about ending. Is Ricky such a packrat he wouldn't tape over/erase something incriminating?
** Depending on if/when the video tape was confiscated by police, he might not have had time to. I imagine that if the police learned that the boy next door was frequently filming the house where a murder took place, they've very quickly want to see that footage if only to see whether it recorded anything of importance.
** No one ever says otherwise, though. Lester is at peace and has achieved and epiphany, and the movie focusses on that because, well, it's his story and he's the main character and that's just basic storytelling. But the fact that we see all the main characters reacting to his murder and its aftermath with varying degrees of alarm and chaos is clearly intended to suggest that not everything has been resolved ideally for everyone.
* It's always just bugged me that this entire film could have been "solved" with the skillful applications of a marriage counselor, a few ass-whoopings and a vacation or two.
** Er, yeah. The point of the movie is that all the characters (and, by extension, suburbia) are dysfunctional. Not seeing the problem here.
** So suburbia is dysfunctional because it demands that men look after their families instead of running off?
** Carolyn cheated first. She was the one running off.
** To be fair, both of them were kind of running away; Carolyn cheated first in a physical sense first, but since Lester spent most of the movie lusting after a teenage girl one could argue that he wasn't exactly devoted to the marriage whole-heartedly and was retreating into fantasy. It's pretty clear both of them had checked out of the marriage long ago, although admittedly Lester did make a bit more of an effort to try and put it back together.
** Just never saw the "complexity" of the story. If the protagonists had stopped navel gazing and acted like responsible adults, the film would have ended after about 10 minutes or so. I like my stories with a little more "meat" on their bones.
** That would be the point. They should, yes, by all rights have all acted more responsibly (with the possible exception of the kids, being, well, ''kids''). But--they weren't. They were trapped in their dysfunctional neuroses--or trapped navel-gazing--that they couldn't see what life really could have to offer. They were trapped, so couldn't see what they should do, what they could be. That, again, is kind of the point of the story.
** You might as well say "If this alcoholic just stopped drinking, his problems would be solved!". If you're an alcoholic, it's friggin' ''hard'' to stop drinking. And if you have deep-seated emotional problems like the people in this movie, it's ''hard'' to solve your problems.
** The film would have been over pretty quick, but no one would have won, no one would have been happy. The entire point of the film is that everyone was trying to break free and get what they want. Their feelings and irresponsibility wasn't the problem. The problem was that when they tried to be themselves for a change, someone else (or their own guilt brought around by social standards) got in the way and caused resistance. So yeah, a few ass-kickings and marriage counseling would have definitely stopped the conflict, but that doesn't mean it would have resolved the roots of it, just beaten everyone back into suppressing who they really were.
** And here's the thing - men typically didn't go to therapy then because up until very recently, it was seen as something shameful. Suicide and depression rates are higher with men, because males aren't supposed to have mental health problems and so they've traditionally bottled things up and suppressed their issues. That's clearly what's happened with Lester - and Carolyn doesn't seem the type to actually be helpful to talk to. They wouldn't go to a marriage counsellor because that would completely destroy the image of perfection that Carolyn has worked so hard to create. So both of them wouldn't seek therapy or counselling because they're not supposed to in society's eyes. Lester has everything that society tells him he should want - high paying white collar job, nice house in the suburbs, a wife who's also hard working and successful, and a daughter to carry on the family legacy - so by late 90s standards, he's thinking he shouldn't be having these problems.
* Why is it okay for Lester to lust after a high school girl, but when he suddenly finds out that she's a virgin, he thinks it's morally wrong? Lester's lust for her squicked me out as much as anybody, but she'd still be a kid, irresponsible, inexperienced, whether she was the slut that she claimed to be or not. Many adult celebrities who are of age are still children because they never had to deal with the real responsibilities of the world. I just don't get why her being a virgin comes into this. Why it's okay to take advantage of an emotionally unstable sexually active teenager but not an emotionally unstable virgin teenager.
** The director's commentary says what they were going for in that scene is: Lester doesn't see her as a sex object any more, but as a daughter figure. It's not just that she's a virgin: the way she says it shows Lester that she isn't really ready for sex. It's also Lester seeing her body, and seeing that she's just a young girl. The pivotal scene between Lester and Angela really comes a few scenes earlier: Angela flirts, Lester flirts back ("You like muscles?"), and Angela backs off. Angela's not promiscuous, but she acts like it in order to manipulate desperate men; and Lester isn't desperate any more. He's given the perfect opportunity to take advantage of Angela, but no longer wants to.
** It's ''not'' ok to take advantage of an emotionally unstable teenager, whether she's a virgin or sexually active. The girl's virginity simply reminded Lester that she's young, and the tone of her voice informed him that she was uncomfortable. He suddenly saw her as a person rather than a sex object.
** The idea that Lester suddenly sees Angela as who she really is in that scene; a very young, vulnerable girl who becomes a daughter figure and not a sex object is reinforced by what happens straight afterwards. He wraps her up in a towel like how an adult comforting a child would. Then Lester makes Angela something to eat, asks if she is OK and talks about his daughter Jane, like a parent.
** TL;DR: It ''isn't'' right for Lester to take advantage of her, and it never was. When he realizes this, he backs off. It's his HeelFaceTurn from ChaoticNeutral to ChaoticGood.
** Lester was also realizing that he could potentially be ruining his own life and Angela's. When she vulnerably says "this is my first time" he sees that she's just a kid. A kid who can sometimes imitate a grown woman - but that it was all an imitation. And then he realized he was about to take advantage of a vulnerable young girl. Fancying her was part of a mid-life crisis and Angela telling him he was a virgin brought him back down to earth.
** Up until that point, it was all fantasy. He was imagining her like some kind of siren, a beautiful woman who seemed to want him just as much as he wanted her. When he finally had the opportunity to make the fantasy real, he was confronted with the fact that this was a vulnerable young woman and he was in fact taking advantage of her, both through his actual seduction and the way he had sexualized her in his fantasies. A lot of this movie is about leaving behind the illusions that sustain you and finding out the truth behind them ("look closer"). Lester's final revelation [[spoiler:just before he died]] was that once the fantasy was stripped away, he was a predator on the verge of committing an unspeakable act against a young girl. He stopped himself, even at the cost of the fantasy that had previously been motivating him to change his life.
* How come Mrs. Burnham's sofa is a meaningless material possession, and Mr. B's (admittedly cool) 1971 Firebird isn't?
** Carolyn was letting possessions like the sofa define who she was, while Lester certainly desired the Firebird but didn't let it get in the way of what was important in life, like love.
** I daresay he wouldn't have minded having beer spilled in his car if they were having sex - making progress in their relationship. This is the line between Carolyn and Lester - he's willing to make concessions to bring them back together, Carolyn is not.
** I presume that Mrs. Burnham doesn't really ''care'' about the sofa on a personal level. The sofa is only there to look nice and project "the image of success" to anyone who might see it. In contrast, Lester's firebird is something he really cares about. It's an expression of his personality.
** And Carolyn seems to care more about a potential stain on the couch than having a rare loving moment with her husband. SkewedPriorities much?
** Carolyn wasn't wrong though. The beer ''would'' have stained the couch and he could have just set it across the room rather than yelling at her. But that's just it: Lester spends the whole movie only caring about what ''he'' wants with no concern for practical matters or the messes he makes, figuratively or literally. The movie makes Carolyn out to be a bitch whenever she's angry with him, but he's constantly just doing whatever without taking her into consideration. In this particular scene, it's 99% certain that ''she'' would have been the one cleaning the spilled beer after sex because Lester made his apathy very clear.
** To be totally fair, no one ever said the Firebird wasn't a meaningless possession. Lester's just blowing up because his wife is letting her fixation on her particular meaningless material possession come between an intimate moment between them. Had Lester done the same thing with his car, we would have been entirely fair to call him out on any hypocrisy -- but since he doesn't that we see, we can't.
* How did Col. Fits know that Ricky had touched his Nazi plate? He didn't actually see Ricky do it, and it looked like the plate was put back the way it was. When and how did he find out?
** Ricky left the cabinet door unlocked.
* Why was Carolyn so angry when she saw Lester working out? I know we know why he's doing it but she couldn't unless she's insane or Sherlock Holmes. What exactly was so offensive about seeing her husband lifting weights?
** I thought it wasn't really the fact he was working out but the fact that it was one of the things that had changed about him so quickly. She was disliking how different he was acting.
** I thought she was mad at the pot smoking, rock music (she liked "elevator music," remember) and general adolescent behavior.
** He's working out to make himself look better, paying even less attention to her than before, and listening to music she hates. She probably assumed he was having an affair and buffing up for his mistress.
** Boiled down, Carolyn doesn't like change. She doesn't like the unpredictable or the unexpected. What Lester was doing (overall, not simply the pot-smoking or the workouts) terrified her and she confronted him in order to force him back into being the man with which she was familiar. Really, by that point she probably would have confronted him for any of his new routine, but the working-out came up first.
* At the end, what's the meaning when Carolyn is shown looking into Lester's closet and breaking down crying while hugging his clothes? Was it because she had seen his dead body and didn't quite manage to touch him so instead she let out her grief on his clothes? Or had she possibly not seen him yet, but she was crying over his clothes out of grief over how she had acted and/or how much he had changed, thus she'd lost him? Or is it simply meant to be ambiguous?
** I thought Carolyn had seen his body and was out of habit trying to put clothes away neatly (a big deal about how perfectionist she is is made) but breaking down.
** She was also clearly planning on shooting him herself, but someone else got there first, and despite her rigid appearances at control she's clearly not an emotionally stable woman. Seeing him dead from what she's planned to do to him would probably bring the reality of how far she'd sunk crashing in on her; she was probably just overwhelmed by a lot of conflicting and complicated feelings at that point. Either way, it would seem unlikely that she ''hadn't'' seen him by that point, given that she clearly heard the gunshot as she was walking up to the house and would presumably make a point of finding out what caused it.
** This may be a lot less deep than the above interpretations, but I assumed that she was hugging his clothes because they smelt like him. She just wanted to be reminded of her husband again and a person's smell can be a powerful reminder of their overall personality.
** She didn't appear to be planning on killing him. She was at the gun range, which gave her confidence, and she was listening to the self-help lecture on the way home. She was planning to confront him, maybe make some changes in their relationship, but the gun was incidental, a McGuffin, not a ChekhovsGun. After she found him, she ran to HIDE the gun by dropping her purse in the hamper in the closet. When she was there, she saw all his clothes and broke down crying, pulling the clothes down. And agreed, it probably had a lot to do with his clothes smelling like Lester.
** I always thought it seemed like the scene with her in the car saying "I refuse to be a victim" was referring to ''herself''. She was threatening herself with the gun, ready to kill herself because her perfectly crafted image of success had come crashing down. So she was holding the gun - a tool she could use to kill herself - and was telling herself she wouldn't use it. My guess is that when she arrives home, she hears the gunshot and remembers that she has a gun in her purse. She's in such shock at the situation that maybe she briefly thinks ''she'' might have done it. She's then horrified at the idea that she could have shot her husband and throws the purse away to distance herself from it. And she broke down crying because she was surrounded by her husband's things.
* How the heck did the Colonel ''not'' smell the pot in Ricky's dresser? Ricky had kilos of it in Ziploc bags, and the smell easily passes through LLDPE. Were the Colonel's sinuses shot off in the war?
** Maybe he just didn't know what it smelled like. This troper can identify it by smell when it's being smoked, but not when it's in the bag.
* Why are Jane and Angela even friends? I get that Angela probably uses her as a Doormat to feel better about herself, but what is Jane getting out of it? They seem to have nothing in common besides being cheerleaders and Jane is clearly annoyed by Angela's vapidness throughout the movie.
** They've probably been friends since childhood but have started to grow apart as they reach puberty and get closer to adulthood. However, they've still known each other for so long that they hang out together out of familiarity and apathy. The movie, after all, is full of people who keep falling back on old behaviours that might be unhealthy or even outright toxic simply because they've been doing so for so long that they can't really bring themselves to break the pattern.
*** I don't think they're supposed to have been friends since childhood; that would imply Jane's parents have known Angela for a long time, but Jane only introduces her to them after the basketball game.
** Both of them are on the cheerleading squad and Angela has a car, so maybe Angela got into the habit of driving her home and they bonded that way. They both fulfilled a need for the other; Angela needed a plainer friend to feel better about herself, and Jane doesn't seem like the type to call her on her behavior or question her lies (Angela has a scene earlier where she makes up an elaborate story about using the CastingCouch to get a modelling job - and the two girls she tells it to slut shame her and fire back at her; Jane says nothing, suggesting Angela can make up as many wild stories as she likes and Jane will never question them). Jane meanwhile was lonely and needed a friend, but she was afraid to get close to people; Angela is using her, so that is a win win for Jane in that she gets someone to spend time with and not have to worry about opening up or getting vulnerable. Ricky coming along is catalyst for their friendship dissolving, because he's actually interested in her as a person. It's possible that Jane's body image issues led to her seeking out a more beautiful and charismatic friend - in the hopes that she herself might be seen as beautiful because of who she hung with.
** It might not be obvious, but even though Angela is beautiful, she's not exactly the perky cheerleader stereotype and doesn't seem particularly popular. She's prickly, sarcastic and cynical – she just happens to have different dreams than Jane does. So naturally, Jane probably sees her as an ally at first – she's less perky than the rest of the Spartanettes, she's willing to go out and smoke and talk shit with her, and she's a fun person to blow off steam and confide in. Their relationship is not straightforward in that Jane is a virtuous loner girl who the popular girl uses for self-esteem – they're both outcasts to some degree.
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