American Beauty by Sam Mendes Essay -- Film Movies

American yellowish pink by Sam MendesThis essay has problems with formatingIn American viewer, 1999, directed by Sam Mendes, we atomic number 18 confronted with thepermeating images that have consumed mainstream American life. Mendes exploits theseimages as constructions that we created approximately ourselves as a means of hiding our true selves. Mendes is able to entail us in the construction and make us active viewing audience by exploiting our voyeuristic nature. In American Beauty Mendes uses the voyeuristic tendencies of the mantrap to acknowledge the permeating constructed images. Mendes, through the use of narration, the mise en snap and cinematic techniques implicates the security guard in to using their voyeuristic tendencies to deconstruct the images in come in to reveal the true image. From the start of the film the construction of images is evident.American Beauty begins with the obvious constructed coolness, shown through the use of avideo camera, of a materi alisation teenage girl. The narration reveals that she wants her father dead. The image portrayed around her is constructed as an evil, unaffectionate youth. The next scene is of a high angle shot, with a voice-over narration. The voice-over goes to explain that this is Lester Burnhams speaking and he is already dead and the pursuit is a construction of the relevant events. This scene holds relevance for two reasons. startle it constructs an image that the young teenager in the previous scene is the killer. And as we will learn by the end of the film this image is not all that it appeared to be. This is a reoccurring theme throughout the film, that these are constructed images, and to notice that on that point is more to the story then what appears on the surface. The high angle spanning shot of Lesters street also holds significance for the spectator. This opening shot is quite a similar to that of Alfred Hitchcocks opening scene in Psycho. The similar themes is the spectators macrocosm the voyeurs. In each we are looking into the private sphere of the character. However, in American Beauty our voyeuristic nature is not shameful. The narration that accompanies the scene is allowing our voyeuristic desires to enter into theprivate lives without guilt or shame. Mendes as does Lester asks the spectator to be the voyeur. As well the sign on Lesters cellular telephone wall is not a coincidence. Mendes is again soliciting t... ...ng against thejumbled blinds of the sliding door. The stark(a) symmetrical image inside the mise en scene iserased in regulate to represent the failing images in Carolyns life.In American Beauty, Mendes constructs his images in order to ask the spectator todeconstruct, by looking closer. This film represents the shabbiness that we have allowed to seepinto American culture. We have allowed ourselves to be overly come to with the way we wantto be or told we should be represented. There are too many cases of the individuals soul be inglost behind a maze of faulty images. Mendes begs the spectator almost in desperation to pronounce tosee the beauty that this world has to offer. However, he is not pessimistic in his conclusions. Like the flower the film is named after we can still flowering late and the appreciation for thebeauty will last for eternity. Yet to render a point to appreciate the beauty we must strip outside thecomplex layers which we have surrounded ourselves with. This is Mendes point, the need todeconstruct the permeating ideologies within our culture. BibliographyAmerican Beauty. Dir. Sam Mendes. Dreamworks /Warner Brothers, 1999.