Who or what is the real American Beauty according to Sam Mendes film we have to look closer to find out
One of the first images Mendes presents us with is the perfect red rose
Cut from its stem an image of growth snapped away from its life source
Within the film this cut Rose becomes a symbol of false surface beauty with nothing inside
The Rose is almost always present in the film
Mendes is careful to include it in key shots
like when Lester first gets the chance to kiss Angela and even the moment of his death a
Cliched symbol of romantic love the flower is expensive and sought-after yet commonplace obvious an
unimaginative choice
Mendes is bold roses imagery
repurposes that obvious flower to remind us to look past
Superficial appearance and avoid being brainwashed by the wrong values the most memorable imagery in American Beauty is used to show what beauty isn't
Stuff and it's become more important to you than living
The most overt use of the rose in the film is to accompany Lester's fantasy of sleeping with his teenage daughter
Jane's best friend the sexy blonde cheerleader Angela note the symbolism of the word deflowered as Lester fantasizes about
deflowering the virginal nymph
American Beauty features thematic echoes of Lolita
Nabokov story of Humbert Humberts pedophilic obsession with the twelve-year-old Lolita. I'm used to guys drooling over me
Started when I was about 12
Lester Burnham whose name is an anagram of Humbert learns Falls for the teenage Angela Hayes whose last name comes from Lolita's real name
Dolores haze
But as the phrase Humbert learned suggests something different ends up happening here
strangely while the fantasy of Angela is empty and misguided it jump-starts Lester's real growth by giving him something to want a
red-blooded desire
His very typical midlife crisis fantasizing about a younger woman buying a cool car quitting his boring job
Motivated by a real sense that he's gone stray
within his rose fantasy sequences
The film's editing uses a technique of repeating the same motion over and over in ever closer shots to emphasize on reality
This is a technique. You can see in surrealist filmmaking like the work of luis buñuel
The disruption of the repetition snaps us out of the narrative flow
Reminding us that what we're watching isn't real just as Mendez's movie hopes to jolt us out of our routine everyday thinking
By the end Lester has to face that his fantasy is false while the Rose covered Angela looked like his American dream
The reality is a key. She's an underage virgin and he'd be taking advantage
Meanwhile, Angela herself is revealed to be a common red rose insecure insincere and terrified of being ordinary
Least I'm not ugly
Yes, you are and
You're boring and you're totally ordinary while its most linked with Angela. The rose is first associated with Carol
I just love your roses. How do you get them to flourish like this?
Eggshells America
Who projects the rosy looking outer life of a happy American woman while inside she's full of anxiety and frustration?
Carolyn has lost the spontaneous girl
She once was and has become a terrified woman obsessed with order and maintaining a certain pruned image of herself
Carolyn can't tolerate natural wild growth. She's trying to live a life exactly like the cut roses in the glass phase
Carolyn's advancing age is a meaningful foil to Angela's youthful beauty
Carolyn is our warning that if we continue down the path of seeking beauty in common places and
Satisfaction in material goods. Our flower will fade will become better and disenchanted
And spill beer on the couch
So what's the movie saying real beauty looks like unlike the boring red roses
Jane and Ricky the self-described freaks are slowly revealed to be the real American Beauty
This early scene juxtaposes, Angela and Jane here
Angela lies about being sexually experienced to seem cool Jane tries to imitate
Angela really don't need to have some psycho obsessing about me right now
But she can't commit because she knows that while Ricky appears creepy. He's genuine and she's genuine too
Jane doesn't seek attention which is why Ricky's camera is so interested in her
Angela projects what she believes to be attractive imagining what others see when they look at her
She's overwhelmed by her need to be viewed as beautiful. I mean he didn't even like
Real Beauty doesn't have this craving because it's inwardly generated not fabricated from the outside end while Angela poses for the camera
Ricky's eye and arse is watching Jane
Ultimately, the film presents a very religious or spiritual idea of what beauty is Ricky even equates beauty with a god-like force
Yesterday I realized that there is this
Entire life
behind things this incredibly
Benevolent force it's like God just looking right at you just for a second far from the expensive red rose
Ricky says the most beautiful thing
He's filmed is something people have labelled worthless and repulsive trash the image underlines the movies thesis that suburban middle-class
America's values are in the wrong place
We've thrown out what really matters at its core beauty is really about how we look at things. It's an experience
The movie suggests there's a life behind objects from the rose to the garbage bag and these objects reflect or interact with human lives
By the end the bright red of the Rose becomes the color of blood
symbolizing life and the vitality were born with
The omnipresent false rose punctuates the film's message to remember what's important in life
And remember we're alive as Lester reminds us any day might be our last so make the most of it