What American Dream?

Newsweek discusses ‘American Beauty’:

There is a very special alchemy at work in “American Beauty,” a movie composed of familiar parts which manages to feel strikingly new. Moviemakers have been busy exposing the hollow heart at the suburban supermarket for a good five decades. Now along comes a gifted screenwriter, Alan Ball; a remarkable first-time movie director from England, Sam Mendes, and a superlative cast to make those old tropes feel frisky and potent again.

Borrowing a page from “Sunset Boulevard,” this dreamy black comedy is narrated by a corpse: Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a going-nowhere writer for Media Monthly who already considers himself among the walking dead. His Realtor wife (Annette Bening) is chilly and compulsive, his daughter (Thora Birch) loathes him and his boss is about to fire him. What brings him back to life is a glimpse of his daughter’s high-school classmate Angela (Mena Suvari), seductively strutting her cheerleader’s stuff on a basketball court. Emboldened by mad desire, he quits his job, starts pumping iron, smoking pot and generally behaving like a man “with nothing to lose.” Lester is in a state of reckless, deluded grace, and Spacey, whose comic timing is as dry as a perfect martini, manages to make him both snakily dangerous and strangely endearing.

Read the rest here.

American Beauty Revision

The exams are coming up and you should be busy revising. Remember there are notes on moodle, notes on this blog and study sites like GradeSaver.

The Rose in American Beauty

The rose has long been an archetype of poets, novelists, and playwrights. Between the dichotomy of having absolute beauty and precarious thorns and its symbol of love and virility, roses have remained amongst the hearts and minds of cultural thinkers for centuries. However, few artistic mediums, if any, have harnessed this archetype as broadly and diverse as the melodrama of American Beauty. The qualities of the American Beauty rose its colour, its prominence and the symbolism of its name weave through the course of the film as its own storyteller, interpretive and reactive for each unique character.

Read more here.

Mendes’ influence on American Beauty

Gradesaver has a full study guide on the film American Beauty. One section deals with Sam Mendes’ influence on the film. Here’s an extract:

The original script for American Beauty was markedly different from the finished product (the shooting script). The script that Alan Ball, the screenwriter, sent to Sam Mendes, the director, began with Jane and Ricky being put on trial for the murder of Lester Burnham. In the original script, Angela testifies against Jane in court, and Colonel Fitts brings in the tape he finds of Jane offering Ricky three thousand dollars to kill her father. The viewers learn that the tape was a joke immediately after Ricky turns off the camera – but one second too late for the defense. Also, the extended shot over the town with Lester’s voice-over in the background that begins the shooting script originally included Lester in his pajamas, flying Superman-like over the town and landing in his own bed. Mendes filmed the script almost as written, but afterwards he and editor Tariq Anwar made substantial changes, to the surprise of most of the cast and crew. Mendes cut the trial out entirely, and also eliminated the “Lester-flying” fantasy. He preserved Ricky and Jane’s impact on the film by increasing their on-camera time throughout the movie.

 

Mendes’ cuts had a tremendous affect on the themes and impact of the story. The question of guilt and the manipulation of evidence played a large role in the original film, but by editing out the trial Mendes shifted the focus from Lester Burnham’s death to Lester Burnham’s life. In hindsight, it seems possible that the original script would have produced a more unbalanced, less poignant film than the final product. Of course the universally exceptional work turned in by the actors was an important component in the film’s success, but Mendes’ cuts also had a significant influence on how these roles were perceived. In shifting the ultimate meaning of the film, Mendes essentially turned all of the roles into “character parts” rather than mainstream leading roles.

Read the rest here.

 

A comparison between Lolita and American Beauty

Some reading on the film.

Lester Burnham, aged forty-two years, underage love fascination named Angela Hayes. Humbert Humber, estimated age forty-five years, underage love fixation named Dolores Haze. The two male figures named above are from American Beauty and Lolita respectively. They are both the main characters throughout their respective genre’s, and both project what they think is the apex of beauty, youth, and sexuality onto girls under the legal statute. While Humbert never quite gets over his fixation of this projected idea of “love”, Lester does.

The similarities between the film American Beauty and Lolita are numerous, from the names of the last names of the “nymphets”[1] to the broken marriages both lead characters suffer at some point or another. It would seem that one of the primary influences for American Beauty might have been Lolita, and thus makes for very interesting comparison between the evolution of love in both.

Read more here.

American Beauty Essay

I have had lots of requests for examples of visual text essays and I will put a few more up. This one is on a film we haven’t studied but it is on a question that some of you have attempted.

To what extent do you agree that films offer an insight into society (past or present)? Respond to this question with close reference to a film you have studied.

Film directors can make a point of using film and cinematography to offer an insight into society and their perceptions. The film American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes, is an example of a crafted piece of cinematography that gives a perceptive insight into society’s ideas on beauty. This film, in the role of a suburban satire, manages to portray all the stereotypical perceptions of beauty then paint the reality of it. Watchers of American Beauty cannot fail to recognise that society and its idea of beauty is false and unrealistic.

American Beauty shows what society traditionally associates with beauty to be superficial and false. The red rose is a running motif in the film, and is closely associated with the character of Carolyn Burnham who grows them. Carolyn Burnham is a frantic, cold and miserable woman, desperate to be seen as successful and happy by those around her. The red roses are continuously in the Burnham home because they symbolise to Carolyn beauty and perfection.

This idea is matched by society’s view on the beauty of the rose. However, American Beauty makes us realise that this rose is not a symbol of beauty, but in reality a symbol of falseness. In essence it represents Carolyn and her wasted life spent trying to be successful and present an image of impossible domestic perfection. It reminds us of the manufactured roses purchased for Valentines Day: these red roses are thoughtless and false. They have no scent and are ‘mass-produced’. Thus what we initially see as a symbol of traditional beauty becomes a plastic signpost for materialism.

The tag-line of American Beauty is ‘look closer’, which immediately makes us think that the characters we perceive to be good, perfect or beautiful are not all they appear. It comments on society’s tendency to judge people on outward appearance. This is shown in the character of Angela. A blonde and popular teenager she fits in with society’s traditional ideas of beauty and femininity. She reflects on many people’s fears when she says:

“I don’t think that there’s anything worse than being ordinary.”

To see that this apparently perfect girl fears the same things we do is a shock, and installs the idea that society’s ideas on perfection and beauty are not only wrong but also impossible. No one is perfect. This is made even more apparent when Angela is contrasted with Jane, who seems at first to be plain and unremarkable. This changes as Jane becomes involved with Ricky.

Ricky likes filming things he sees to be beautiful. His ideas of beauty are not in keeping with those of society. Often he films things which most people would find repulsive, like a dead bird. For him, beauty is more than just a face value, and we often look at things form his perspective because there are sequences taken from his camera as he films it. This gives us the unique opportunity to be inside Ricky’s head.

Ricky finds Jane beautiful. We see this when his camera zooms in on Jane’s face reflected in a mirror, completely ignoring the beautiful Angela’s strip tease. As Jane becomes more confident over the course of the film she wears less make-up. In the climatic scene where Jane agrees to leave with Ricky, the falseness of Angela’s beauty is revealed. Ricky informs Angela of her worst fear, that she is completely ordinary:

“Yes, you are (ugly). And you’re boring, and you’re totally ordinary, and you know it.”

This exposes to us that society’s idea of beauty is false and at the end of the day doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. Society thinks that beauty brings happiness, but it is apparent that Angela is incredibly insecure and uses Jane to make her feel better about herself. Thus we realise that our idea of beauty is manufactured and is so common that is becomes ordinary and boring.

American Beauty is a film that opens our eyes to the way society perceives beauty. It is insightful because we recognise that there is so much more to life than the stereotypical looks that everyone associates with happiness. The film allows us to realise that much of the uncertainty and misery in the world is caused by people trying to be an image that isn’t real but manufactured and false.

Movie of the Week – Revolutionary Road

This week I saw ‘Revolutionary Road’ a film based on the novel by Richard Yates. It is directed by Sam Mendes who is best known for ‘American Beauty’. Like ‘American Beauty’ the film looks at life in suburbia but this time in the 1950s.

It is 1955, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (yep, the tragic ‘Titanic’ sweethearts are re-united) are Frank and April Wheeler, a handsome couple with two children who live in a lovely suburban home near New York. Frank works for a computer company; April was once an actress who abandoned these ambitions to be a wife and mother. The catalyst for change is Frank’s upcoming 30th birthday and April’s humiliating experience in amateur theatricals as it brings on a quarter-life crisis for them both. They decide to throw in their conventional boring life and move to Paris where April will get a well paid secretarial job and support Frank while he figures out what he really wants to do with his life.

‘Revolutionary Road’ is a really well-made movie. The cinematography is beautiful, and the soundtrack by Thomas Newman (American Beauty) is rich and haunting. DiCaprio and Winslet pour their hearts into their characters, and their performances are outstanding. However, the characters are completely self-absorbed and really, nothing much happens. I’m afraid I found ‘Revolutionary Road’ excruciatingly boring!

A discussion of American Beauty

I don’t know where this discussion of American Beauty comes from but it is well worth reading for revision purposes.

When you have nothing to lose you might as well risk everything. The film American Beauty shows us from the outset that Lester Burnham is in a rut. In response to a midlife crisis Lester reverts to adolescence. His sudden irreverent rebellion enrages his wife and confuses his daughter particularly when he turns a lustful gaze toward her friend Angela.

From its first gliding aerial shot of a generic suburban street, American Beauty moves with a mesmerising confidence and acuity epitomised by Kevin Spacey’s calm narration. Spacey is Lester Burnham, a harried Everyman whose midlife awakening is the spine of the story, and his very first lines hook us with their teasing fatalism and like Sunset Boulevard‘s Joe Gillis, Burnham tells us his story from beyond the grave.

The film weaves social satire, domestic tragedy and whodunit into a single package, Screenwriter Alan Ball’s first theatrical script blurs generic lines and keep viewers off balance, winking seamlessly from dark comedy to deeply moving drama. The Burnham family joins the cinematic short list of great dysfunctional American families, as Lester is pitted against his manic, materialistic realtor wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening, making the most of a mostly unsympathetic role) and his sullen, contemptuous teenaged daughter, Jane (Thora Birch, utterly convincing in her edgy balance of self-absorption and wistful longing). Into their lives come two catalytic outsiders. A young cheerleader (Mena Suvari) jolts Lester into a sexual epiphany that blooms into a second adolescence. And an eerily calm young neighbour (Wes Bentley) transforms both Lester and Jane with his canny influence.

American Beauty is English theatrical director Sam Mendes first film and he expertly juggles these potentially disjunctive elements into a superb ensemble piece that achieves a stylised pace without lapsing into transparent self-indulgence. Mendes has shrewdly insured his success with a solid crew of stage veterans, yet he’s also made an inspired discovery in Bentley, whose Ricky Fitts becomes a pivot for both plot and theme. Cinematographer Conrad Hall’s sumptuous visual design further elevates the film, infusing the beige interiors of the Burnhams’ lives with vivid bursts of deep crimson, the colour of roses-and of blood.

Another question for American Beauty

Here is another good essay question for American Beauty.

How does a feature film you have studied use narrative and other film techniques to examine the values of society?

Firstly, discuss the ‘values of society’ that are represented in American Beauty. Then, how is society, its structures and what it holds to be important conveyed in the film?

This might be through film techniques such as:

•      the situations characters in the film are faced with, and how they act and react.

•      the characters themselves (e.g. what they are like, how they are conveyed and developed, how they are contrasted). Lots of scope there!

•      the visual images, motifs and symbols used.

•      the dialogue

•      how characters relate to each other. Again plenty to discuss.

•      the settings used and the costumes worn.

Writing about Lester

Discuss the ways in which the director of a feature film you have studied manipulates audience response to the characters and to what effect.

To answer this question think about how Lester is revealed to the audience, how is he developed? The sort of things to consider are:

• costume
• colours, music, motifs, symbols that are associated with Lester
• body language
• Lester’s vocabulary
• the situations that he is involved in and how he reacts to them
• the types of shots used on Lester