American Beauty: Hollywood Movies with Tragic Endings Find Beauty in Truth

American Beauty: Hollywood Movies with Tragic Endings Find Beauty in Truth

Oftentimes, movies without Hollywood endings make a lasting impact compared to movies whose endings make us feel good initially. As for myself, I'd much rather leave a movie theater not only tear-streaked, but chest heaving with grief because then I know that the movie I've just seen has touched my life.

Looking back on the past century of Hollywood movies, you'll see that among the most popular classics lie a more than coincidental number of movies that make us cry versus skip out of the theater.

Tragedies have been around for centuries before us and will remain long after generations of our descendants have moved on. Shakespeare's entertainment is not only remembered but revered almost four hundred years after his death. The reason for the success of his works withstanding the test of time is that Shakespeare's tragedies, no matter the plot, cover a wide variety of themes that include love, war, family, and suicide, topics that are undeniably significant in life today.

It is clear that movies that not only entertain but also make profound statements about the human condition, even if they are not praised initially, are remembered much longer than their cheerful counterparts.

Furthermore, even with the advancement of incredible cinematic technology, the older classics and the newer ones are of similar quality and are loved equally by audiences.

For your consideration I present to you five masterpieces of cinema in the past one hundred years, Gone with the Wind (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1943), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and American Beauty (1999). While all five share thematic similarities, they are extremely unique and significant in their own way.

Citizen Kane, starring Orson Welles, is a wonderful example of how tragedy portrayed realistically makes a film a masterpiece. Although Kane's Xanadu is elaborate and almost completely unfathomable in its lavishness, the behemoth he creates to keep the world out stands for the lengths some people go to in an attempt to separate themselves from troubles other than their own.

The bottom line is that Kane's emotions and experiences, from losing a mother to being caught in a very public affair, serve to unify all humans in their prevalent occurrence in all of our minds. The symbolism of Rosebud, revealed at the end of the film, crushes viewers in its simplicity and importance to Kane, a man thought by all to have little if any capacity to truly love and grieve.

Rhett Butler's quote in the final scene of Gone with the Wind was voted by AFI in 1995 as the most memorable line in cinema history. The movie ends in a marriage dispute between Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) and Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh), arguably the most iconic couple of any American film. Like so many lovers, Rhett and Scarlett suffered the ravages of the world together, each with strength of his and her own, but together with a powerful force nothing could tear down besides the jealousy of a man whose wife covets another man.

Scarlett asks Rhett as he walks out the door, "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" to which he replies, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." Two beautiful people with a beautiful story are torn apart by a common factor in a large number of marriages. How can a movie with such commonplace themes become a timeless classic?

At the end of Casablanca, Rick (Humprey Bogart) forces his lover Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) on a plane with her husband out of the country and away from his fight with Nazis. Out of concern for his safety and a desperate love for him, Ilsa begs Rick to join them. He refuses, saying that she will regret it, "Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and for the rest of your life." Whether his statement is true or his decision turned out to be the best choice, it is one that is made by many people who sacrifice love in an attempt to do the right thing for the one they love.

In Doctor Zhivago, Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) makes the same choice for his lover Lara (Julie Christie) and sends her away because she is in danger. Zhivago dies years later, wandering in the street, from suffering a heart attack after seeing a woman he believes to be Lara. Whether our situation is exactly the same or not or whether we regret the decision we made, many of us have sent people whom we loved and cared deeply for away for one reason or another.

American Beauty is a modern movie with topics that have not been shown in film for long, but have existed in society for centuries. Throughout the duration of the film, an unhappy man (Lester Burnham played by Kevin Spacey) transforms himself. Sitting in the kitchen looking at an old family photo he smiles to himself, realizing that for the first time in a long while he is truly happy. He is then shot in the back of the head by a man (Chris Cooper) who believes him to be using his son as a prostitute for drugs, while his wife (Annette Bening) hears the gunshot from the front door, gun in hand and prepared to kill her husband over the belief that he is to blame for her lover ending their long affair.

While this exact scenario happens far less than every day, it is the fact that happiness can be so short-lived that touches viewers. Hearts go out to Lester and tears fall because he has maintained innocence throughout the film and those who victimize and destroy him are the ones who have actually done wrong. The eccentric story of Lester Burnham is poignant to us all because we have also felt his pain, but his suffering is of a much larger magnitude than most.

Just as the story of Rhett and Scarlett has burned vividly in audiences' minds today, so it will in centuries to come, along with works the like Romeo and Juliet.