Film Analysis Of The Film 'American Beauty'

American Beauty (1999) is an American drama film which stars Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham, a man who is seen to be having a midlife crisis and becomes sexually attracted/interested in his teenage daughter’s best friend. As the film progresses this attraction leads him to make major changes in his life in order to cope up with his urges, and thus these changes somehow helps him to manage and tackle his midlife crisis. This film written by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes tries to show how the American middle class may view beauty and personal attraction. This film uses humor, irony and ridicule to show and criticize people's stereo types of American families. The film takes an approach to portray everything an American middle class family

In the next scene now he can hear Lester himself talking, although we cannot see him yet but we can clearly hear him giving his own introduction. One can say that Lester is the main narrator of this film. He gives the audience an insight not only to what he is thinking himself/his own thoughts but also gives a preview of what is about to happen or what might happen later on in the film. In the following scene we see Lester physically, after finishing his own introduction he moves on to introducing other personals in his life (other characters in the film) like his wife in the front yard picking a rose, the dog and his neighbors. He gives us, the audience insights into the relationship between him and his family via his brief narration. According to theorist Bordwell this is the exposition part of the film, where we can see Lester establishes the general situation of his character and his surroundings. We can say that his narrations throughout the film is seen to be developing the plot of the film at the same time as explaining it. Soon we find Lester in a car where his wife is driving him to work and their daughter to school. There we see Lester mention and further talk about his current situation/ problem/crisis in life. After the beginning scenes and his brief narrations, now in the following scenes of the film we see the demonstration of what Lester was talking about. For example the scene where he is having dinner with his family, we see a slight sense of sarcasm from both Lester and his daughter towards each other, we see his wife raise her tone and almost get into an argument with her husband. This can be the part of the film where the conflict is being introduced; the conflict between Lester and his wife, the conflict between Lester and his