Buddhist-flavoured Movies

Another non-Buddhist movie with a lot of Dharma in it is Solaris. A strangely beautiful film.

I loved American Beauty and saw it a couple times. It's been a while, though.

Seems to me most of the "adult" main characters were exhibiting delusion/samsara and its effects. Kevin Spacey was obvious. His wife was enamored by power and saw KS as wimpy. Her boyfriend wasn't willing to keep up the duality of deception once it was revealed. The boy's dad was a latent homosexual who saw himself as macho military. The boy's mom was completely numb in order to stay with her husband.

The plastic bag, to me, was what the whole movie revolved around.

The boy, who everyone thought was creepy, out of touch, and weird, was really the only one who saw at first. He saw his parents for who they were and coped at their level in order to survive, but seemed aware of how messed up that was. When he had his camera, though, he had his own way of filtering that enabled him to see the beauty in the world, including the plastic bag and Kevin Spacey's daughter. The daughter saw how messed up her family was too (of course, all teenagers think that). She thought the boy was creepy until she saw that he really saw her and then she really saw him.

I don't think you ever saw Heather Graham as troubled. She was the clear and obvious symbol of form without substance (okay, on a certain level, compared to the other characters). One of the girls at school saw through her. And at the end we find out that despite all her claims, she is a virgin, empty of experience. When Spacey was willing to deny her, he was ready to see reality (as he did when dying). This was the turning point for everyone--both dads died, KS's wife realized the value in her marriage, can't remember what the boy's mom did, but maybe she was released when her husband died. And the boy and girl left the scene for another life, one that didn't seem perfect to most but made sense to them.

- Rene