"American Beauty"

Film Review # 66109

Film > Analysis, Criticism, Etc.

"American Beauty"

A review of the film "American Beauty" in terms of its dominant discourses and themes running throughout the narrative.

978 words () | 0 sources | 2005 Australia

Paper Summary:

Composed for a magazine publication, this paper on the movie "American Beauty" asserts that unhappiness, loneliness, anger and depression are common characteristics of a contemporary society in suburban America by using specific instances of scenes and characters from the film itself.

From the Paper:

"However, Lester is not the only unhappy character in the film, and we come to realise that the Burnham family as a unit is a complete representation of society's negative aspects that the filmmakers of American Beauty have intentionally set out to promote, in a manner not dissimilar to Sam Mendes' later film Road to Perdition (2002). In a scene depicting the family at the dinner table, a number of filmic techniques are immediately recognised: the use of shadows to foreground the melancholic nature of the situation, the positioning of the characters and the distance between them to represent isolation and how they are alienated from one another, and the way in which the camera angle remains consistent for a considerably long time in order to emphasise the anger and tension that is present."