That Last Second isn't a Second at All:

                                                 A World Within a Moment    

     Beauty is an unexpectedly loaded word. One may look at some thing, hear some song, experience some emotion, and the understanding that that something is something beautiful simply occurs. The innate understanding of beauty seems so simple in that instant that it does not strike us until later how strange it is that we should consider any one thing more beautiful than any other thing -- be it nature, art, music, or emotion. It is amazing how a concept generally considered simple becomes so complicated the more we reflect on it. The dictionary defines beauty in a very basic sense as “the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).” This definition lacks specifics, simply because it is impossible to apply specifics of any sort to so complex a term as beauty.

     I would like to suggest that beauty may not be defined in specifics even as a specific term in and of itself, or necessarily even subjectively by the people experiencing its effects. Rather, I would suggest beauty be defined in terms of a moment, as a description of life as it ought to be lived and understood -- as an overarching theme, rather than a specific noun. The understanding of life in its purest and simplest form ought to be beauty, and the comprehension that despite life’s struggles there is always beauty buried beneath the ashes.
I experienced Sam Mendes’s iconic film American Beauty for the first time this past year, and the ideas presented in it have had a profound impact on my understanding, in that it seemed to confirm a great many of the ideas I had already begun to form about beauty and all that it entails. These concepts may be applied to art with interesting connotations, as well as to life on a much larger scale.

     The plot revolves around the life of Lester Burnham, a middle-aged man trapped in a dead end job, and the lives of his family. Deep in a mid-life crisis and caught in what appears to be a loveless marriage, Lester becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter Jane’s best friend Angela. His real-estate broker wife Carolyn, also feeling the effects of their suffering marriage, becomes involved with a rival real-estate broker. Jane, unhappy and uninvolved in her parent’s lives, seeks solace in the company of Ricky Fitts, who has recently moved in next door with his parents. The film explores the development of intricate relationships between the characters during the last few months before Lester’s death, revolving for the most part around Lester’s struggle to discover what it is he feels he’s lost in the opening sequence.

     The film is essentially a sequence of moments, which is most likely what attracted me to it in the first place, and what drove its message home in such a profound manner. The idea that life ought to be viewed as a string of moments that contribute to personal growth rather than a singular occurrence (as opposed to the common theme of entire lives viewed as nothing more than a single moment, a droplet in the proverbial bucket of humanity) has always fascinated me, and this film helped to solidify many of those theories and ideas that heretofore had been little more than theories and ideas.

     Perhaps the most influential character in the film is Ricky Fitts, whose open-minded and not particularly reserved approach to reality attracts both Lester and Jane to him as something of a modern-day sage. He is not a paragon of morality – he sells high-end marijuana to pay for his filming habit, and is generally more creeper than upstanding citizen. He does act, however, as the catalyst Lester’s transformation from middle-aged push-over to the ultimately happy man he dies as, as well as Jane’s transformation from her unhappy Angela-reliant state to self-confidence.

     According to Ricky, the beauty in the world around him has more of a spiritual value than any sort of physical worth. What monetary value could one possibly place on a brilliant ray of sunlight passing through a bank of black, rain-ridden clouds? How could one possibly place a dollar value on the laughter of a child, a leaf caught in the wind, the last breath of a dying man on a battlefield? These things, these moments, cannot be quantified in such a manner. The question “Do you want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?” is full of this concept, and his simple explanation of the clip shown even more so. He is inviting Jane to share his experience of the world in the most intimate way possible -- in essence, to share his most beautiful, life changing experience. In sharing this video with her, he is sharing the depths of his soul. “That’s the day I realized,” he continues, speaking of his experience taping the plastic bag dancing on the wind in the footage playing on the screen, “that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid ever. Video is a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember. I need to remember. Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.”

     Perhaps for me it is the soft piano melody playing in the background as the bag tumbles and floats through the air and the fallen leaves skitter and whirl across the pavement, but I could watch this scene over and over and each time experience the same sensation, and in watching it easily understand that the world is a beautiful place. All that beauty requires of us is an open eye and an open mind. There is so much of beauty in the world that we miss because we tend to walk through life with our eyes closed -- one does not actively have to seek out beauty. All we have to do is open our eyes. The idea of the moment is also prevalent in the scene. That here in this moment is an entire world, that each world is a thing to be grasped, that each world is a thing of intimate beauty. If we ignore the moments in our lives, we will miss out on a great deal of beauty.

     In this sense beauty is absolutely subjective (depending on the person, on the moment), while art (the creation of man and therefore objective based on man’s authority over his or her work) is not. Art, while remaining difficult to define, is still a much simpler concept to grasp than beauty. A piece of art is just that -- it moves beyond theory into the realm of physical reality; whether it be oil on canvas, words on a page, or sound waves in the air, it exists in the physical realm. We may touch it, smell it, hear it, and breathe it, while beauty is an idea much more difficult to grasp in any certain terms. Art in its purest sense combines theory and reality. It begins with an idea, a concept conceived by a man or a woman who, for whatever purpose, designs to bring that concept to fruition, into the realm of physical reality. The act of realizing the idea, the concept, is required for concept to become art. Ricky’s film of the plastic bag is a form of art, a physical representation of the concept of the simplicity and beauty of a moment in time that ought not to be forgotten.

     This theme of beauty in the moments of life comes to fruition in the last few minutes of the film. One of the most compelling pieces of dialogue in the entire film sums up the idea in a few words. “I’d always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes in the second before you die,” Lester muses. “First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all. It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time.” In that final second of his life he recognizes all of the things he’s missed, or thought he’d missed, in all of the years that he’d lived -- all of the important things that made his life (that had until this point seemed to him so inconsequential) meaningful and worthwhile. Moments -- falling stars and maple leaves, his grandmother’s hands, his cousin Tony’s Firebird, his daughter, and his wife – that completed things, and made life beautiful.  

     It turns out that the “it” Lester has lost is his appreciation for life, for the moments and the memories and the small things that make life complete. This is mirrored in the lives of each of the characters surrounding him as the plot wraps itself up, as well as in the method the director chose to portray the final minutes of the film. We are presented with that single moment from each perspective, because each perspective matters. Each moment matters, not only because it is a moment in a life of some human being, but because there is someone experiencing it. That is what makes the moment beautiful -- the experience.

     The surrounding characters find either fulfillment, or are confronted with the same sense of loss that inflicts Lester in the opening of the film (because they have not come to the same peace with reality as he has). But, as his early observation points out, “It’s never too late to get it back.” Jane and Ricky have one another – they have tapped into a source of love, understanding, and commitment. For them that gunshot represents another drop in the bucket of life. Angela has (for the most part) recovered her innocence. Carolyn, in hoping to find retribution for assumed wrongs on her husband’s part, encounters a deep sense of loss at his death, and we see the beginning of the healing process in their relationship (better late than never). There is a profound sense of resolution in each of these moments, and though each character obviously has his or her flaws, there is hope for each of them to start anew.

     I'm not sure how much I would give for one day of unjaded clarity, for one day in which I would be able to cease moving and be awed by the stunning beauty of the world I live in. Part of me is mesmerized by the concept of living a life solely in the pursuit of beauty, and another equal part of me absolutely terrified. But I suppose I have developed a similar view as Lester Burnham voices in the last minutes of American Beauty -- “I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain, and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.”
     
     In my last moments of life I want to remember all of the beautiful things -- the glint of the sun on the water, my father’s laugh, the color of my brother’s eyes -- I figure if I can recall these little things, little worlds within moments that have defined my life, then it has been worthwhile.