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Breaking the Mould, Generating New Moulds

by Jacob Murphy on September 20th, 2005

Hollywood is probably not that different than the real world as I sometimes think. In Mozambique a young man sells pineapples on the side of the highway. He sees some measure of success, so the next day five more young men try their hand at the pineapple trade. One of them may be even more successful than the original salesman.

In Hollywood there are the occasional movies that seriously break the old way of looking at things, but it’s not long before the mould-breaking film becomes a new mould. I will use the example of American Beauty, and Life As a House.

American Beauty pushed the boundaries of what an audience could handle. It pressed a lot of buttons concerning suburban marriage, professionalism, teen sexuality, teen-adult sexuality, drug use, family values, homo-sexuality. All roled in to one dark, brooding movie the likes of which audiences had never seen. People talked about this movie. It was seen as ground breaking; A new height in cinematic story-telling acheivement.

American Beauty stood alone for a while as the only major motion picture release to so ambitiously tackle so many serious social topics at once. Then came Life As a House.

Life As a House is very different in many ways. Everything in American Beauty was falling apart. In Life As a House there is literally and figuratively a great deal of construction, things assembled and built up.
In American Beauty Drug use becomes more prominent as the film progresses, while in Life As a House it decreaces.

But both deal with the same issues, or rather Life As a House follows in American Beauty’s footsteps in daling with: Death and dying, drugs, the break-down of the family, teen sexuality, teen-adult sexuality, homosexuality, and the apparent hopelessness of suburban dwelling.

This article is not a comparison bewteen the two, or a review of these films. I love them both. But it seems to me that one is a direct descendant of the other. American Beauty paved the way, and Life As a House crept in through the newly opened door of how far a film can push these issues. I am glad that there are directors and writers out there who will take a chance, break a few moulds, and hopefully be rewarded for it. I suppose I should be just as thankful that there are other writers, directors and producers who can see the opportunity to take new genres even further.

Again, I greatly enjoyed BOTH of these films, so don’t hear that I am saying films shouldn’t ride the curtails of other, earlier films. It happens all the time. And sometimes the films that come after surpass the originators. Can you think of any?

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