Cinematic Language In American Beauty

Anthony Oliver
Cine 105
Professor Clap
2 October 2011
Film 1 Analysis “American Beauty”

Form is how the movie is portrayed. It’s all the dialogue, action, pictures, and sounds of a movie. While the content of consists of the subject within the movie. During “American Beauty”, Lester and Carolyn are constantly bickering at each other with their daughter Jane, who is stuck in the middle of her two parents gnawing at one another’s throats. The movie shows Lester buying a brand new firebird, the car he always wanted. Also, Lester begins buying weed from his next door neighbor. Finally, Lester has a strange sexual drive for Jane’s friend Angela, who has made him think that he should start trying to look more muscular. All these little aspects complete gaps in Lester’s state of denial.
With the genera of drama in place (form), not only Lester disguising his depression, but his wife Carolyn carries out a large burden. Her standards are held so high that her own self cannot overcome her level of success.
Her personality alone cause fill in the content of her role throughout the movie. The annoying and bi-polar personality she exhibits gives us enough information to file her in as a large aspect of the film (content). Cinematic Language is how the movie is communicating with the audience. For example, Lester and Ricky are smoking pot together and are talking about how Lester’s last few days have been. Ricky then quits his job because Lester is looking as in idol to him. Also, the roses in the few patterns scenes with Angela are telling us that Lester is very attracted to her. The director enforces the “weirdness” of Ricky and Jane with a very dark cloud hanging over their heads, which anyone can see they have a romantic type of connection lingering between them. Parallel editing is commonly used throughout any drama film. In “American Beauty”, the scene where Carolyn pulls up to the drive through where Lester now works, she is with another man from her real estate that she has currently been having an affair with. As they pull up to the window, Lester catches the two kissing in the car and this creates ripples for the rest of the film. The only pattern in the movie,
other than Lester buying pot, is the roses peddle scenes focused on Lester’s attraction for Angela. His strange and abnormally weird drive for Angela is being covered up for the genuine love for his wife. (#1) The film is about a man going through a mid-life crisis which erupts this chaotic wave and disperses though his whole family. Explicit is the material distributed on the surface, it is what you physically see. While implicit means the deeper meanings the director gives to the audience for a chance of a personal reference to make the movie seem more realistic. Lester is taking this mid-life crisis with open arms, he is buying expensive presents for himself but he is really hiding his emotions by doing so. His wife, Carolyn, is an up-tight woman who enjoys listening to elevator music. She is having an affair with her husband and it must have been coincidence because she was caught red handed by her husband and this puts both, Lester and Carolyn, is a position that my personal thoughts would not conclude too. Their next door neighbors are Ricky Fitz and his father a military colonel. While Jane, the daughter of Lester, is very curious with Ricky. Ricky also sells pot to Lester and Ricky’s father, as institutionalized he is, he sends out on a secret mission to find drugs in his sons room but instead he finds a disturbing video of Lester then thinks he is witnessing his son in a homogenous experiment. This is followed up by Ricky’s father kicking his son out of the house and shooting Lester in the back of the head. When Carolyn comes home and sees her husband this is the moment where they truly reveal the love she had for her husband. The implicit meaning is how the love they shared never disappeared it was just covered up by each person’s mental issues. The explicit meaning of this film was their hatred towards each other. There was one scene where Lester was showing affection but it was when he was drinking and Carolyn was pushing him off because he was going to spill on the couch, leaving both of their opposite personalities clashing.