American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes at first just seems like an unusual or surreal take on american life in the suburbs. Starring Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham, a schlub working a miserable job who is despised by his wife and daughter. The film reveals its true meaning when a recurring theme involving Lester imagining one of his daughter’s friends flirting with him as a hypnotic tune plays in the background. The scene is always dissolved with rose petals scattering everywhere before he gets a grip on reality. You could easily just associate the rose with romance and how Lester is attracted to Angela, his daughter’s friend, but the rose pedals are from a specific rose called american beauty. This particular species of rose is prone to rotting from the roots allowing the rose to appear perfectly healthy while it decays on the inside. This is exactly what Mendes tries to convey throughout the film using techniques such as composition and lighting. All the characters appear content externally while none of them are actually happy or stable on the inside.
Lighting is one of the techniques Sam Mendes used to exude how the character were feeling on the inside compared to their composure. An example of this transpires during one of Carolyn's open houses. She continually repeats to herself “I will sell this house today”, but after continuously striking out with clients she retreats inside the house from the intensely lit back yard. After closing the blinds she is left in darkness and begins to cry. The lighting is parallel to Carolyn's mood. Mendes uses the bright backyard to represent her impressive composure while using the inside of the house to represent her true feelings of defeat both at the open house and in life. |
Mendes also uses the composition of his every shot as a reminder that everyone is numb on the inside despite the false perfection that is conveyed by all of them. The family dinner scenes are an excellent example of just this. In the first dinner scene the table follows the rule of thirds as the balance of character and objects on the screen are perfectly symmetrical, however, the rule of thirds is ever so slightly broken in the second dinner scene. The wide angle shot and the characters remain the same, but there are no roses in the middle of the table and lester has beer out contrary to the last scene. This signifies the changes undergone by each character. The first scene represents, as the subtle vase of american beauty roses conveyed, each characters implicit defeat even though they are perfectly well composed on the outside. The rose cunningly makes other appearances in scenes including the yard, living room, kitchen, and many other places throughout the movie while never breaking its meaning.
Every character that is revealed to us in the film fits the american beauty rose metaphor. Carolyn, Lester’s wife, appears confident and in control of her career until she loses her mind and composure multiple times including when she debates whizzing a bullet through Lester’s head at the end of the movie. Angela also is unveiled as distressed about being normal and boring even though throughout the movie she holds a cheeky grin and displays confidence. The next door neighbors, Ricky and his parents Frank and Barbara all resist projecting how they feel on the inside even though they all are miserable in their current circumstances. Even Buddy Kane, the “king” of real estate, admits to Carolyn that him and his wife are separating, but that “in order to be successful one must project the image of success.” Lester is the only character that doesn't seem to fit. He does quite the opposite of hiding his emotions and even attempts to change his life around. Quitting his job while standing up for himself, smoking weed, buying his dream car, and working out all seemed to make him happy. It isn’t until the end of the movie that you see him smile over a picture of his family with a vase of american beauty roses right in front of him. Even though all the characters in the story attempted to hide that they were miserable, not even the most substantial amount of denial could deter reality or in Lester’s case, death. Just like an American Beauty rose.
American Beauty. Dir. Sam Mendes. Perf. Kevin Spacey. Prod. Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks.
Dreamworks, 1999. Film.
American Beauty. Dir. Sam Mendes. Perf. Kevin Spacey. Prod. Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks.
Dreamworks, 1999. Film.