American Beauty Scene Analysis

The analysis of the visual style is to first consider in the composition of the movie. Some directors pay attention to formal and dramatic composition, the others emphasize on non-formal compositions and exposure or highlighting effects. Furthermore, other directors use camera movements to describe and demonstrate the theme and the film itself more efficiently to the audiences. That is, many cinematic compositions have each intention to be used in the film by directors’ purpose. American Beauty (199) by Sam Mendes is a verisimilar movie story line with realism sense. The film is a story about aspects of contemporary American society, delivering typical American culture to the audience, such as individualism, distinct relationship

between family, drug, gun violation, loneliness, discrimination, and homo-sexuality. This paper will concentrate on the close-up shot and non-diegetic sound effect.
First of all, Sam Mendes used the close-up shot effect to emphasize and highlight the significance of the film.

At the first, the usage of close-up shots effectively showed when Lester reacts from Angela’s cheer-leading. When Lester feels attractive on Angela, who is daughter of Lester’s friend in school, the close-shot was on Angela’s movement of cheerleading and Lester’s face. Showing this moment, director delivers the notion of Lester’s feeling to the audience. In order to describe that he was besotted with Angela, the close-up shot was effectively shown. In addition, along with the first part, director used the close-up shot effect in the imagination scene of Lester. In the film, the red-rose has been symbolized Lester’s imaginary fantasy on Angela. The close-up shot emphasizes on vivid illustration of red roses and beauty in the film; it also describes the symbol of the

beauty.
Secondly, it is necessary to see carefully on the death scene of Lester. As a close-up effect, there is a family photo and a full bottle of red rose leaves in front of his body; those elements represent the money, sex, goods of American culture and life. Moreover, when the pistol was fired, the dark red blood was splashed the bottle and was stained the white wall. Thus, sophisticated and surprisingly close-up effect with red colors underlined the significances, and those effects make Sam Mendes to be regard as exceptional director.
At the last, using one of the characters in the movie, Ricky, Sam Mendes delivered that the most beautiful scenes of life, capturing the moment of the leaves and discarded plastic bag which doesn’t contain anything messy with the wind. Using close-up effect on movement of the leaves and empty plastic bag, director emphasizes on his intention of movie that there is an invisible beauty hidden behind the situation. That is, the close-up effects effectively describe the moment of characters’’ emotion or demonstrate the directors’ intention of the film.
In addition, Sam Mendes used the diegetic and non-diegetic sound effects explain the emotion and make audience to empathize on protagonists’ situation.

For example, in American Beauty by Sam Mendes (1999), sound effects help audience to feel the moods of characters; it is not only on the diegetic sound, but also non-diegetic sound. First of all, diegetic sound effects have been described the characters’ feeling and mood. Inserted music in American Beauty can identify the change of the character in accordance with a various music style. For example, when Carolyn sings in her car, it shows her feeling with the diegetic song by using lyric of song. Although a various diegetic popular music help to understand the Burnham’s family, non-diegetic sound has an important role to help audience to identify the character in the movie. For instance, Lester’s imaginary scene of red roses over Angela’s naked body, the non-diegetic music which is played by orchestra, leads the audience to follow Lester’s feeling. Thus, the diegetic and non-diegetic sound not only influences audience to sympathize characters’ feeling and mood in the film but also help audience to identify the characters and the director’s intention via atmosphere over the

film.